Shortly after 8:20 on Tuesday morning Merrion raised his right hand to knock on the closed door of Apartment 1 at 1692 Eisenhower Boulevard.
He could hear Steve Brody inside, talking at normal conversational level. He remembered Larry Lane: "Cheap construction guarantees you know your neighbors, whether you want to or not."
Brody's voice expressed pain. "Well, but I already told you that, didn't I that I'd do it? I told you yesterday. The thing is, I can't get to it yet, not 'til I get finished with the pump. I got to get the pump fixed first. I got it all taken apart down there now. A big storm comes along and hits us and it could, a hurricane or something; time of year for that, you know, and we do get 'em through here – dumpa lotta water on us 'fore I get it back together, wed be in big trouble. And this's something we don't want to happen. Because, you'll remember, we didn't get to it last summer, like we should've done, and we knew it at the time. So it then came back and bit us, served us right, and we both admitted that. You were saying "No, it'll be all right. It'll go another year, make it through another season."
And then it didn't, did it.
"And then so as a result, we then had all that trouble it broke down, the end of March." Brody's voice was becoming louder and his words were coming faster. "All that snow and then the rain should've known we're gonna get that, soon's we didn't fix the pump and then we get the thaw and we had a flood in here. Basement fulla water. Would've ruined the oil burner, I didn't pull it out and lug it up here in the kitchen by the gas stove to dry out. Tenants screaming bloody murder, two whole days without no heat. I am scared to death myself, 'fraid the pipes're gonna freeze 'nd burst; plaster comin' down around our ears. You remember that, don't you? You yelled at me enough, worsen any of the tenants, like it's all my fault or something that it hadda go and rain."
Merrion tapped two fingertips twice on the door.
"So anyway, now I'm fixing that." There was a note of firm assurance audible in Brody's voice. "All going to be taken care of, so we wont have to think about that again this year, first time we get snow. I get through with that plus of course whatever else comes up along the way, something has to, never fails, that can't wait a day or so then I'll paint the third floor hall."
He hesitated. "The hallway on the second floor? No, did that one last year, 'chou 'member? That time in April we had the three vacancies up there all at once; I'm practically going out of my mind here, trying to get all of them painted? We both agreed the time it made good sense to do the hallway, get it done at the same time since it so happened I was working up there anyway."
Merrion rapped his knuckles three times on the door.
"And then after I get through with that, the one on the third floor, then the downstairs hall." Brody paused again. When he resumed talking his voice was noticeably louder. "No, doggone it. Will you just listen to me? Just once will you listen what it is I'm trynah tell you? I keep trying to tell you things all the time, and it always seems like I can't get any place, ever make you listen: you can only do one thing at a time, all right? One thing at a time."
He paused long enough to take a breath. Merrion closed his fist and hit the door. The tone of Brody's voice changed; it took on a conciliatory note. "Because look here now, all right? I'm not sure you actually realize this, but there's a lot of work to do around this place here all the time, a helluva lotta work. Really. Anna people who own the property, you know, that four guys trust? They all live around here. It's not like with Florentine Gardens, say, or Falls Estates, owners're from alia cross the country and never even see the places. Something starts to go those places, you got some time before you really hafta fix it. Owners never see how bad you've let it get, just as long's the checks keep comin'. The four guys on this trust're different, all local. People own this place're here. We cut too many corners, it starts to look rundown, drivin' by they'll see it. Kick us out and hire new management. You and I're outta jobs, or I at least would be. So consequently what that does, it really keeps me hoppin' all the time around here. Day and night it seems like, sometimes.
This's not a well-built building. It needs a lot of maintenance, just to keep it operating. And that's not allowing for any improvements here, either that's just trying to keep it up, trying to stay even."
Merrion, now interested, lowered his fist and leaned his left shoulder against the door frame, crossing his arms.
The sound of conciliation in Brody's voice became pleading. "And sometimes you know, even though I'm doing that, workin' day and night, it just seems as though it's never gonna be enough. I get so that I start in thinkin': "No, it's no use. It's never gonna be no use. No matter what I ever do, I cannot keep up." But even though I think that, I still keep on trying. Because I know that no matter what I do, if it's the best I can do then my conscience will be clear. And if it isn't all right, Ginny, that's just gonna be too bad, because it's all that I can do." He paused.
Merrion looked at his watch, grew impatient and rapped twice again.
"Yeah," Brody said, adding urgency to his tone, "I know that. I realize all that; I hear what you're saying but just listen to me now, all right? There isn't anybody else who if you could get them to come in here on short notice, could do it any better or any faster, either.
I'm telling you: It's not just me. It's just the way it is, and that's all there is to it. So if I maybe gave you that impression, thinkin' that, something that I might've said or something, well then, I just didn't mean ah all right? Not what I meant to do. Right. Now, no, now look, all right? There's somebody at the door now and I got to answer it. No I don't know who it is. That's why I got to answer it, so I can find out. I can't talk to you no more right now. I got to get the door. Yeah, Ginny, I know: you're worried about it."
His tone became plaintively soothing. "I understand that, I really do, and I'll take care of it for you. No, I can't tell you when, not right now. Because I can't do that. Look, there's someone at the door. I can't talk no more. I tell you what: I'll call you back. Later on this afternoon. Yeah, this afternoon, soon's I get a chance, after lunch. Good-bye."
Merrion heard Brody replace the handset hard on its wall hook and say "Jesus Christ, now what?" There were two footsteps and the door opened. "Yeah?" Brody said gruffly. Then he became dismayed and said: "Oh. Mister Merrion. Diddun know it was you."
"Morning, Steve," Merrion said, 'sorry to bother you."
"Oh that's okay, Mister Merrion," Brody said, frowning deeply, recomposing himself, 'perfectly all right." He was average-sized, five-ten or so, big-boned, at one-seventy or so, no more than ten or fifteen pounds heavier than he needed to be, but it looked like more; he seemed to carry all the excess flesh as folds of skin on his face and neck and rolls around his waist. He wore his brownish-grey hair long and combed it back in thick strands from the brow of its recession in the front, arranging them in several sebum-heavy strands over his scalp. He wore a clean white tee-shirt and dark-green chino work pants; heavy black shoes with thick welted petroleum-proof soles. He had a snap-ring of keys hooked to the belt-loop just behind the opening of his right-front pocket. He gestured with his right thumb toward the phone behind him. "I was just talkin' onna phone. Ginny over management. She called me up again. She's always calling me up all the time. Every morning, got some new thing on her mind, some new project for me to do. Like she wants to drive me nuts. And then, in addition, she comes over here, two, three, four times a week, see how I'm doin' on something. I don't know what it is with that woman, what she thinks I am."
"Maybe she's lonely, and hot for your body," Merrion said. "Lookin' for love. Just doesn't know how to say it to you, put it into words."
Brody grinned and reddened. He had clearly envisioned that possibility, perhaps often. "Nah," he said, 'isn't that. Can't be that. Guy my age, I'm fifty-one years old, and she's what, thirty-two?
Just a kid. Uh uh, I think what it is is that she doesn't understand how long it takes to do a thing. No idea, you know? No comprehension at all.
"You get these kids: it's not their fault, but they never did anything with their hands. Spend all their lives shufflin' papers, workin' with figures. Now the computers: hit a key and what they want to do is done. So as a result they got no idea of how long it actually takes to do something. They think when they say it, they want it done, bingo, that's all there is to it. Now it's time to go on to the next thing onna list. "Can't have you standin' around here alia time, doin' nothin', getting' paid for it, you know." And then they laugh, "ha ha," like that at you; like they didn't really mean it, they're only fooling with you.
"Well, it just isn't like that, as you and I both know, and I try to tell her that sometimes. "You know when I'm working on a thing and it's gonna take a week, all right? Because I told you it was gonna take that, before I even started. I been on it a day and of course it isn't done. So what're you doin' this now for, already; comin' around and actin' like you still don't understand a day is not a week? You got me thinkin': how can this be? After I went to all the trouble of explaining it to you, tell you what's involved in a thing, I make sure you understand; you tell me you do; and then, boom, like that, you turn around and call me up, the very next day, the day after I started, acting like you don't know the first thing about it and I must be finished now. Tell me you now've got something else for me, I got to get started on right away. I mean: How can you keep doing this to me all the time? This doesn't make any sense."
"She always tells me she'll stop," Brody said. "Promising me then she wont do it no more; she'll cut it out. She never does, though." He paused and reflected, "She's still a good kid, though; we get along all right."
The anxiety returned to his voice and his face wrinkled up. "But hey, what's it with you being up here? Something didn't go wrong here or something, I hope? Everything still okay with Mark, up there and everything with him? I didn't hear nothin'. He was doin' okay last I heard. Sounded like he was all right. I know I didn't get no call here. Got my machine on all the time here, too, I'm not in the apartment; somewhere else in the building or something. I know they got my number up there and everything 'cause I gave it to them there when he went in. I didn't get no calls. Kid's still all right up there, isn't he? Nothin' wrong there with Mark?"
"If there is, I haven't heard about it," Merrion said. "Far's I know, everything's fine."
Brody's face relaxed. He nodded and smiled. "Okay then," he said, 'that makes it easy. Then what can I do for you, here? Anything else is a cinch, long's it's not those fuckin' drugs again. Anything else I can handle, no problem."
"It's LeClerc I'm here about," Merrion said. "I'm here to see Janet LeClerc'
Brody looked puzzled. "Yeah," he said, 'sure. She lives here all right." He grinned again. "But hey, you oughta know that. You're the one put her in here. You told me to give her an apartment if I had one vacant and we did, and I did it, which I was glad to, something I could do for you. Number fourteen. Third floor. You know the building, right? Sure, you used to come here a lot. Back when Larry Lane's still here; you used to come here and see him, number eleven. Jee-zuss he hadda hard time, the poor guy. Anyway, number fourteen: one of our nicer ones. Always gets plenty of sun. Overlookin' the street at the front. All she's gotta do's look out the window, any time she wants, see everything that's going on. She's been here with us almost a year now.
"Not the best tenant we ever had, no, couldn't go that far for her. But she doesn't cause us much trouble. Rent's always paid on time, anyways; that's always the biggest thing. Course it should be, town's paying it for her; she don't have to pay it herself.
"But just the same, no matter who's payin', I wish they could all be like that. Not to have that to worry about, ever again on my mind:
"Well, did so-and-so pay their rent yet, or are we gonna have to go in and throw 'em out onna street?"
"I'm tellin' you: that is one job I really hate. I'd rather eat something that I knew was gonna make me sick and throw up and maybe break out in a rash, everything like that, 'n I would to hear I'm gonna have to go and put somebody out. And it's almost always the same reason. In some buildings I've been in sometimes have to do it on account of someone making too much noise or not being clean or something; that could happen. But in this building it's almost always been because for some reason they didn't have no money, so I have to go and do it. I don't care what the reason is. It don't make any difference to me. I got my orders and that's what I hafta do: Out in the street; they haven't paid us their rent. Cryin' an' hollerin', weepin' an' wailin', everything like that. Sometimes they wanna fight me. Like this was my idea? I'm the one who made the decision that they're getting' thrown out; this's something I like to do?
"I'm tellin' you, sir, and I am not kidding you, one little bit: it's an awful part of the job. It's the worst job in the world. At least it's not gonna be that with her."
His expression changed, becoming avid. "But why then, what is it? Why is it you want to see her7. You think she did something wrong? Like that time when she tried to steal all the old lady's money? She in some new kind ah trouble? Some kind of a problem we should be concerned about here?"
"I need to talk to her, is all," Merrion said. "There's something I need to see her about. But I've been up there. I went up to fourteen and I knocked on her door and she didn't answer. The TV was on in there. Not loud, but I could hear it. I decide maybe she didn't hear me, knocked again. Good and hard, so she would've had to've heard me.
But she didn't come to the door that time, either. So that raised another possibility: maybe she did hear me; she just doesn't want to see me. Got a guest in her apartment, like I just told her Saturday she was not to do. And so that's when I decided I'd come down here, and see if you knew where she was."
"She's usually up there, this time of day," Brody said doubtfully, looking at his watch. "This's when she's got the news on. Now it's not that I'm watching her alia time now, I wouldn't want you to think that, but this time of day is when I'm getting started, going to work on what I got to do. And so I'm around the place inna morning, upstairs or down. Or on my way down to the basement, all right? Like I was on my way today, when Ginny called up. You move around like that in the building every day, you get so you know where most of the people usually are. And this time of day she's generally in her apartment."
"Yeah, well, that's what I thought," Merrion said, "TV going and so forth. But then when I knocked again, and she still didn't come, I wasn't sure. Does she leave the TV on, if she happens to go out?
Because she told me she goes to the store in the morning to get cigarettes."
Brody nodded vigorously as Merrion talked. "Uh huh," he said, 'every day. Faithful as clockwork, you can depend on it. Winter; summer; hot or cold; raining; snowing; I don't care: by ten A.M. she's down the stairs and out the door, on her way down to Dineen's. Raining or something? Doesn't make any difference to her. She's got her little plastic hat on, one of those folding plastic hats they used to give out in banks and dry cleaners always wears one of those. Inna wintertime, her boots and coat and scarf on, so forth, all bundled up, keep her all nice and warm. Like the mailmen, you know? Whatever it takes. Janet's going out, and that's just all there is to it. She's got her routine she follows, regular rounds every day."
"But not this early," Merrion said, 'she doesn't go this early."
"Nope," Brody said firmly. This'd still be too early for her. Janet by now'd be just about up. Sittin' in her bathrobe in front ah the TV there. Drinkin' her coffee; tellin' everybody off, says something that she doesn't like on the television: "Yah that's what you say, always givin' us your stuff. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Bullshit." Talks back to it all the time. Oh, she gets all upset at them. I've been up there, working on the third floor, and I've heard her inside sayin' all that stuff. Very emotional.
"Assuming of course she got to bed last night; made it in the bedroom and then actually got into bed. Didn't go to sleep there in her chair, front of the TV; wake up still in front of it, still on, same place inna morning."
"She does that," Merrion said.
"Now and then, she does," Brody said. "She used to, at least.
Sometimes I guess she must've been sleeping so heavy she went to the bathroom in her chair, couldn't even get herself up to go in the bathroom and do that. "Cause there's stains on it. You can see them if you're in there, and she isn't sittin' in it.
"See, the reason I know this stuff is because the people under her and the ones next to her, the next apartment, they complained to me sometimes about the TV bein' too loud and goin' all night. That would mean I would have to go in there and speak to her, and find out what was goin' on. Didn't happen all that much, maybe four, five times, but it did happen. Go up there and knock on her door, and… this wasn't something I look forward to, you know? It's not like I enjoy it. But she didn't wanna believe that. She thought this was all my idea, to hassle her and make her feel bad, and it wasn't that at all. I tried to explain that to her, make sure she understood that it was nothing personal, involved.
"See, what I was assuming was that she was probably drinking, passed out in the chair with the television on. There was a lot of bottles I would see that she'd been putting out when she put her rubbish out, you know? That was mostly what her rubbish was -bottles. Newspapers, one or two magazines, cartons from frozen food dinners, which I guess she mostly lives on. Cereal boxes and that kind of stuff. But most of what she was throwing out that you would see when they emptied the barrels was liquor bottles, vodka and rum sometimes she didn't put the cover back on, and I would see what she put in. But you still would've known; you could hear them empty her barrel because the bottles made a lot of noise, bangin' and crashin' all over the place.
"But I was used to it. It wasn't like this was something new, you know? We've had other tenants here who've had that problem, and it's really not that uncommon. People living alone: they don't have much to do with themselves. Get lonely, start drinking too much. It isn't a good thing for them, but they don't stop; I guess they get accustomed to it.
"Where someone like Janet's concerned, well, Mark was a lot like that.
All you can really do when someone's doing that to themselves is say:
"Look," and then tell them what you think. And then I don't really know what you do I guess you just hope for the best. And so I told her quite frankly I don't mind telling this to you, either, because it kind of worries me, living in the same building with her too, my life's also on the line. She goes up in smoke some night, I could go up with her.
So that was also on my mind.
"I went up and I knocked on her door, and I told her that this bothered me and all, her falling asleep like that I did not say "passing out," even though that's what I really think it was because I know she smokes. I told her: "What bothers me here is actually a lot more than the noise from the TV anna neighbors complaining a result that they can't sleep. Because you can turn the TV set down, and I know that now you're aware of this problem, you will do that. And then they wont be awake and complain. But what really bothers me about this is the fact you smoke. You fall asleep here inna chair some night, you've got a cigarette going, it could be a real fire hazard here. That could be a dangerous thing."
"And then what I said to her was this: "Now we do allow tenants who smoke to smoke in this building. We don't say that they can't do it.
Even though we know that can cost us some business sometimes, people just refuse to rent apartments from us if we allow smoking. But we think ordinarily what you do up here's your business, as long's you're living here. It's your place; you should be able, do what you want in it.
'"As long's you don't disturb nobody else; that's the one major rule.
It's your health, not mine that you've got to think of, and if that's the decision you've reached, well then, it's all right by me.
'"But I still have to tell you at the same time if we find there's been some kind of an incident up here some night because you fell asleep in that chair there and set the place on fire, smoke detectors in here went off or maybe even the ones out in the hallway started to go off, and the fire department hasta come, well, God forbid that anything should happen to you wind up inna hospital, smoke inhalation, something. Because if you haven't thought about that, you should give it some thought fire inna night is a serious thing. But even if something that bad doesn't happen, I can tell you right this minute what it is going to do is make a big change in how we look at things around here. And what we decide then we can let you do in here."
"I think it got through to her. Looked like it penetrated anyway. But like I say, you never know. All I can say's we haven't had any problems with her since then for a while. Nothing I've heard about anyway, and if there is one I generally do."
"Yeah," Merrion said. "Well, what we've been hearing down the courthouse is that she'd been keeping pretty steady company up here recently with a guy we're not all that sure's a wholesome influence.
Just the opposite, in fact. You understand: we have to be concerned.
So that was what made me decide I ought to come up here today and take a look around."
"Oh, that would've been right, you heard that," Brody said. "She has been. That would be Lowell you mean. Lowell Chappelle. He's been here a few times; seen him around here several times."
"You'd know what he looks like, then," Merrion said. This's a guy you'd recognize, then, you were to see him again? Does he also have a car, truck or something? See, I couldn't tell just by lookin' around here this morning, by looking at what's parked around in front if the guy's around. And I was, you know, you start thinkin': "Well, what am I gonna run into here, I go up this woman's apartment? Am I gonna find this guy in there, have him to deal with, I go into this woman's apartment?" He's got a reputation of being a pretty violent type of guy."
"Oh, yeah, I've seen him, good many times," Brody said. "But now you ask me, I don't think I've ever seen him driving anything. Seem like he'd almost have to, have something to get around in. Can't you check with the state police? I should think you could do that."
"I did," Merrion lied, kicking himself for not having thought of it, 'they report no listing for him."
"Well," Brody said, 'if he's got someone else's jalopy I couldn't tell you what it is or if it's here. I guess I must've never seen him in it.
"But now him, far as he's concerned: that's a whole other thing here.
I've seen him a lot. Fairly big guy, he is, stands out in your mind.
Big face." Brody cupped his hands beside his cheeks and puffed, bunching his jaw muscles as well. "Like this, okay? Only he's like this all the time. The man has a very big face. Sort of dark-skinned.
Might be one of those part-Indian people or something; you know how you see those guys in movies. Real black hair, not much grey. Probably about my age or so, at least; maybe a little older. Keeps himself in good shape. Looks like he's always doing something, doesn't want you getting in his way."
"Not a guy you'd pick to mess with," Merrion said.
"No," Brody said, 'definitely not. I believe what you said about him being a violent person. The guy definitely looks it. Of course I'm not the kind of guy that likes to go around, you know, picking fights with people. But if I was that kind of guy, I wouldn't pick one with this Lowell character. Not if I wanted to win it. He looks like he'd be mean, someone got him going."
"Yeah," Merrion said. "Well anyway, basically what I wonder if you'd do for me here is get your passkey and come back to fourteen with me and let me in, so that I can see if my friend Janet's in there decided she's not coming to the door today, got her curlers in or something."
Brody looked worried. "I dunno," he said. "I dunno if I should do that. See, you may not know this, but since you trust guys had this whole thing changed around and so forth, eight, ten years ago? Brought the new management in? Well, since they came in here and I hadda start reporting to them, Valley Better, they hadda different way of doing things. They put in different rules. So, you may not know this, but they've gotten very strict about that kind of thing. Lettin' people into the apartments I mean, except vacant ones we're showing. They don't want it done.
"Basically what they're now telling us is: "We don't want this going on, here, anymore, so stop doing it. And don't be calling up alia time and asking is it all right. Because the answer is: "It's not."
They're very clear on this. And as you know, this job and all, it means a lot to me and I don't want to lose it. Give them any reason to decide I'm too much trouble so they're getting rid of me."
Merrion took one step forward so that about eighteen inches of space at the threshold remained between him and Brody. He spoke pleasantly, in a low voice. "Steve, you work for Valley Better Residences, Inc. And Valley Better works for me, all right? So we understand each other here, I am one of the people who own Fourmen's Realty Trust. Fourmen's Realty owns this building, understand that, Steve? Valley Better just runs it for us, collects the rents, pays the taxes, and hires you to work for us.
"Most of the time we are pretty smart people," Merrion said, 'if I do say so myself. Except sometimes. Sometimes we do something fairly stupid, as even we have to admit. After we've cleaned up the mess we made because we acted stupid instead of smart.
"Steve, this morning's one of those times, for me. This morning I did something stupid and created a minor problem for myself. Now I want you to help me get out of it. That way I wont have to spend the whole rest of the day thinking how stupid I was this morning."
Brody looked extremely worried. "What did you do, Mister Merrion?" he said.
Merrion heaved a great sigh. "I parked my car across the street. Then I waited until all the other cars behind me at the light, all of them went by, and I got out and shut the door and locked it. I looked both ways, and then when I was sure the coast was clear -after maybe I'd let eight, nine cars go by, in both directions I came across the street and in through the front door. Let it close behind me. Then I climbed the stairs up to the third floor and I knocked on the door of apartment fourteen, where Janet LeClerc lives. As I've already told you, I knocked twice. She didn't answer. So then I came down and knocked on your door, but unlike Janet, you came to your door. And then everything that came after that, all the rest of it you know."
Brody's rumpled face displayed real pain. "Mister Merrion," he said,
"I don't understand. I have to tell you that."
"Understand what?" Merrion said. "Tell me what you don't: understand. Maybe I can help you out."
"What you did stupid," Brody said. "What did you do that made i the big mess you now want me to get you out of?" '{"I already told you," Merrion said. "I stood beside my car after I parked it. I don't know exactly how long I stood there but it was certainly long enough to give Janet time enough to glance out of her window and spot me. She may not recognize my car, but she's certainly seen enough of me to recognize me on sight. And I stupidly gave her the time to do it before I made it into the building.
"So she probably knows I'm here. And since she doesn't want to see me or talk to me, she didn't come to the door. Instead when I knocked she ignored me. It didn't occur to her to turn off the TV, she isn't very smart, but this morning it looks to me as though I've been a little dumber'n she has. I alerted her to the fact that the next person who banged on her door was going to be me. So that's the mess I want you to get me out of. Come upstairs with me now and use your passkey to let me into her place. So I can do what I came here to do, which is see what the hell's going on."
"You don't think I'll get in trouble?" Brody said.
"I'm sure you wont," Merrion said. "I'm an officer of the court acting in the course of official business, my official duties, the supervision of a defendant who has charges pending before the court in which I happen to be the chief magistrate. And in the second place, in addition to that, I am also a beneficial shareholder of a property interest in this building, to a part of which I am directing you as an employee of its management agency to admit me, in order that I may enter upon and inspect the premises. Thereof.
"That satisfy you, Steve? I got at least two heavy-duty rights to get into that apartment. Either one of them oughta do nicely."
"Okay, then," Brody said, stepping forward and pulling the door shut behind him, 'but it's purely on your say-so I'm doin' this. I'm still not sure about it."
"Don't worry," Merrion said. "Nothing'll happen to you. I can almost guarantee it. Something may happen to me, everything doesn't turn out to be the way I hope, up there… but that's nothing that needs to concern you. All you need to do is make sure you got your right key with you now the one that'll open her door?"
Brody nodded, patting the snap-ring at his belt. "Gotter right here," he said "With me, all times. Never can tell when you'll need to go in.
Somebody's locked themselves out, or someone else locked them out, any hour day or night, and the first they do's come lookin' for you, let them back in. Found that out myself at the very beginning, three or four times all it took. The simplest way's the only way: carry it with you, all times. Save yourself all of that grief."
Merrion let him by and then followed him up the four flights of stairs leading to the third floor. He remembered Larry Lane denouncing the increasing difficulty of climbing them as his cancer worsened and weakened him. "Takes me about twenty minutes, make it up this place.
Have to stop and rest five times, once on the landing, second floor, and halfway up each flight. And it's all my fault.
"We're building the place," he said, "Fiddle told us we should bite the bullet, invest in an elevator. Then wed get older, quieter tenants, be able, charge higher rent than we could with just the stairs. Four grand more I think he said it would've cost us. I was against it: too much money. Got the others to turn him down. "Nothing doing," I said,
"no unnecessary features. If we can get along without it, then it must be we don't need it. Whatever it'd cost would be therefore too much dough." Now here I am, livin' in the place. Wasn't banking on that when I said "no elevator." Don't like that decision at all."
Ten feet along the landing from the top of the staircase they stopped at the door with the 14 on it. They could hear an announcer promise joyfully that "Good Morning, America' would 'be right back after these few brief announcements from your local stations, so please, don't you dare go away."
Brody, unsnapping the key-ring from his belt-loop, used his left hand to knock hard on the door. "Miss LeClerc?" he spoke in a newly-authoritative voice. "You in there now, Miss LeClerc? This's me, Mister Brody. You gotta answer me now, if you are. Haven't got any choice in this now. Come to the door now, and let me in. I gotta right to go in there, you know, anytime, make an inspection, during all reasonable times. This's one of those times. Got a passkey right here in my hand."
There was no response. From the TV a different voice, a woman's, compared the degrees of headache pain relief she claimed to get from Tylenol and 'just plain aspirin, or just plain ibuprofen, either."
Brody pounded on the door four more times. "Plus which I have got Mister Ambrose Merrion from the courthouse here with me, and I know you know him, and I've got to tell you, he's very concerned about you. He told me how concerned he is now about you, and that's why he's up here today. And all the other people down there at the courthouse with him there, how concerned they also are about you and what might be going on with you in there. So we got to come in, that is, he does, take a look around. So come on now and open the door."
"Stop talking and open the thing," Merrion said.
Brody thumped the door three more times. There was no response. He looked down at the bunch of keys in his right hand and began to paw through them with his left forefinger. "Miss LeClerc, now?" he said.
"Come on, Miss LeClerc. Stop fooling around with us here. We know you're in there. We know you haven't gone out. I always see you, see you and hear you, whenever you go to the store, and I didn't today, yet, so we know that you're still in there.
"So come to the door, please now, willya? Make life a little easier on all of us here. We got to come in, take a look at your premises, and we got to do this today."
"Steve," Merrion said.
Brody selected the passkey from among the bunch and inserted it into the lock. "See, Miss LeClerc?" he said. "You can hear that, can't you? That was me out here in the hall, doing just what I told you I'd have to do, even though I don't wanna; putting the key in the lock. You see what you force me to do here? You wont open the door, when I ask you to in a nice way? You force me to open the door up myself like this, which I don't like having to do."
"Stop talking and unlock the damned door," Merrion said. "Horsing around with this broad."
Brody seemed not to hear. He raised his voice. "And why is that, I'm asking you, that I am doing this? Well, you have left me no choice.
Have you? Aren't you the one? Of course you are; and you have to know it, too, I think. Which I by the way have to say that I think is very unfair of you here."
"Openah fuckin' door," Merrion said, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
The lock snapped open. Brody turned the knob and pushed the door. It was hinged on the left and stopped against something made of wood behind it. "Bookcases," Brody said, muttered, allowing Merrion to brush by him and enter the apartment. "Dunno if you recall how it was back when you were visitin' Larry Lane, but they didn't have 'em then.
But alia units got these bookcases in 'em now. Dunno why they bothered."
To the right of the door there was an oval maple table with four straight chairs grouped around it. There was a Boston Herald tabloid folded in half at the corner of the table. The air carried a heavy cargo of stale tobacco smoke, something combining fatty meat and cheese, tomato and beans that had been cooked too long at too high a temperature, human perspiration, stale beer and something else. Piss is what it is, human fucking piss. The apartment smelled as though the toilet hadn't been flushed regularly. Fucking hopeless people, can't even handle indoor plumbing. Fucking hopeless bastards. In the center of the table there was a beige china bowl with two white envelopes face-down in it. There was a key-ring with four keys splayed out on the table.
Straight ahead there was a small square kitchen alcove lighted by two casement windows over a double stainless-steel sink. The refrigerator flanked the cabinets suspended from the ceiling on the left and the electric stove occupied the space under them on the right. There were a few dishes unevenly stacked on the counter next to the sink; the handles of tableware protruded between them. On the stove there were two matte-grey saucepans, one of them with something brownish-yellow caked on the side of it, along with a frying pan dull with a scalloped rime of greyish grease around its edge. The area was enclosed by a waist-high partition wide enough to double as a snack counter; two wooden stools stood under its overhang. There were four round anodized aluminum ashtrays on it, red, gold, green and blue; all of them had been used. There were four packs of Winston Lights on it, three of them opened, and several lottery scratch tickets scattered along it.
There was an uncapped 1.75 litre jug of Old Russia vodka at the furthest end, the one nearest the interior wall at the left of the kitchen area. There was a yellow wall telephone set mounted above the end of the counter.
Next to it there was a white wall with a door opening onto a dim interior hallway leading away toward the southwesterly corner of the front of the building. Visible beyond it was a door ajar on a blue-tiled wall and the shower-curtained end of a bathtub. The rug on the floor of the living-room area was a dark-green swirled-embossed pattern. It was soiled and had not been recently vacuumed. Against the wall there was a bulky two-cushion sofa-bed, the seat cushions high, much thicker than the back-rest. It was upholstered in a nubby maroon fabric with a decorative silver thread. At each end there was a square table made of dark wood. The one at the end of the couch furthest from the door held a lamp with a base made of a foot-tall china model of a pink-dressed and picture-hatted, apple-cheeked country girl; she wore white socks and black mary janes and displayed a white-toothed grin between parted ruby lips. There were four empty Coors beer bottles around her. The table at the end nearest the door held a lamp with a base made of a foot-tall china model of a freckle-cheeked, barefooted farm boy wearing blue bib bed overalls and a straw hat. He was carrying a bamboo fishing pole jagged where the tip had broken off and grinning between parted ruby lips. There were two Coors beer bottles standing next to him and one on its side in front of him.
There was a narrow rectangular coffee table made of chromium and glass in front of the sofa bed. There was a magazine open on it, displaying a two-page color photo of a blonde woman with dramatically black and green eye shadow that made her green eyes look enormous, and bright scarlet lipstick on her tightly puckered lips; she was naked from the waist up, cupping her grotesquely large breasts in her hands with her thumbs and forefingers urging her nipples forward toward the camera, using so much pressure that the pores of the nipples were spread. There were smears of semen on the picture. The surface of the table showed many rings left by wet glasses. There was a small bud vase with one reddish plastic flower in it; next to it there was a one-pint clear glass mug about half full of a brownish liquid. On the rug under the table there was a pair of tan work boots with lug soles, the right one upright and the left one tipped over on its side. A pair of grey socks with red stripes lay over the boots. A pair of jeans with a black belt and a pair of blue-and-white checked shit-soiled boxer shorts inside were heaped open on the floor, still shaped to the lower body of the person who'd removed them and left them there. There was a white tee-shirt bunched up at the further end of the sofa.
Over the sofa-bed there was a three-by-four-foot print of a generic mountain-lake vista shaded by overhanging maple branches on a sunny sky-blue day. Four white vees represented four white birds in flight over the lake.
Merrion remembered first seeing and then gradually growing to dread seeing again another copy of the same picture long before. It had hung over the couch in Larry Lane's apartment. "He)i, that's a very good picture," Larry Lane had said, one day when Merrion sneered at it. "I want you to cut out that talk now, making smart remarks about my lovely picture. We hadda pay a lotta money for that picture. And there's another one of 'em just like it, or almost just like it anyway, in every single unit here. Got 'em to add a little class to the operation. People come and live here, they then decide they don't like 'em? Fine, they can take 'em down. Perfectly all right with us if they got no taste. But when they first come in to see the place and size it up, that picture tells them that this is a classy joint. They can see it. We took extra trouble make these apartments nice.
"Sure, when they get in they find out you can hear your neighbor two floors down and four doors over if he farts in the bathtub. When it's windy, the walls shake, gets a little drafty, windows rattle. The plumbing ain't that great. The heat comes up it sounds to God like the whole place's gonna blow up with you in it. But they notice those things later, after they paid the deposit. Before that what they notice is that in the living room we have got this fine scenic picture, so they know that we've got taste. Spared no expense on amenities; those pictures cost us three bucks apiece."
Beyond the couch in the southeasterly corner of the room at the picture window overlooking the boulevard there was a 27-inch Sanyo television set on a TV table with a VCR and a cable-service box under it on the lower shelf. The brief announcement from the local station now concluding was a 30"Second ad describing the superior comforts available from a revolutionary new design in mattress coils.
Opposite the TV in front of the book cased wall next to the window there was a blue and green reclining chair with an end table and a black metal floor lamp next to it. There was a clear glass one-pint mug on the table; it contained about four ounces of a clear liquid.
There were two remote control keypads on the table. There was a round purple anodized aluminum ashtray with a coil around the rim to hold cigarettes in place; it was full of stubbed butts. There was a crush proof box of Winstons open next to it.
Janet LeClerc in a white cotton nightgown decorated with small blue and red flowers with little green leaves and some lace around the yoke, under a thin pink chenille robe, sat curled up in the recliner with her weight resting mainly on her right buttock, the footrest up but not in use, her feet and legs tucked up under her, snoring softly and steadily with her mouth gaping open. Her left eye socket was badly bruised, greenish-blue and swollen puffy.
When she exhaled she made the kind of rhythmic, low, rumbling, happy growling sound that came from the television, harmonizing with the large tired golden retriever, first seen playing hard with children on a sunny day, now contented lying down after a nutritious dish of choice cuts of meat and meat by-products in real gravy combined in the dog food advertised in one of the brief announcements from the ABC local-affiliate station in Springfield.
Merrion picked up the VCR remote keypad and punched it twice with no result. Then he picked up the other one and shut the television off.
"Good," he said. Janet exhaled, making a low whistling sound. Her hair was mussed around her left temple. Her face was flushed and shiny with sweat.
"You aren't gonna wake her up, are you?" Brody said in a soft voice, as though he had been caring for a sick person whose recovery depended on plenty of rest.
Merrion snorted but he kept the noise down too. "Sooner or later, I'm gonna, yeah," he said, glancing down at her as he put the remote pad down and then hitched up his pants. "Before I leave here she's gonna have to wake up and tell me some things I want to know, bet your sweet life on that. But first I wanna find out if Chappelle's in here someplace. Like I told you the guy makes me nervous. He's in here someplace with us, I want to know about it. So the first thing I am gonna do is take a look around here."
Brody remained standing at the door and Merrion crossed the room to the interior hallway. "Maybe the bedroom," he said, talking to reassure himself. "Sleeping it off inna bedroom? Got just as good and drunk as she did last night, but had the sense to go to bed." Brody did not say anything.
Merrion went through the door and paused at the second door, opening into the bathroom. He pushed it open further and looked in. To his left there was a blue plastic shower curtain drawn around the tub enclosure. Beyond that he could see the front of the flush. All the light came from a high narrow window directly ahead of him. To his right there was a long fluorescent fixture mounted above a large vanity-mirror and a sink enclosed in a countered cabinet below it.
There was a long white extension cord plugged into a socket at the bottom of the fluorescent fixture; it dropped down from the fixture to the floor beside the cabinet and led across the blue bath mat up to the edge of the tub, where it disappeared behind the shower curtain.
Merrion stepped back from the bathroom door and went down the hall into the bedroom. The door was ajar. He pushed it open slowly and silently and looked into yellowish window-shaded dimness onto an empty, unmade double bed, a pale-green top sheet and two woolen blankets, one white and one tan, mounded up on a wrinkled and stained pale-green bottom sheet; there were two pillows in pale-green slip cases jumbled together at the head of the bed. There was a small table next to the far side with a clear glass lamp and a small alarm clock on it. There was a four-drawer pine chest of drawers in the far corner of the room. There was a small yellow upholstered chair in the corner to his right; it was filled with a pile of soiled clothing. The room smelled stale and loamy.
Merrion had no desire to go in. He turned around and started back toward the living room. "Any sign of him?" Brody called softly and hesitantly from the doorway.
"Nothin'," Merrion said. "Janet isn't what you'd call a great housekeeper, though. "S pretty rank in here."
"Because see, I was just thinkin'," Brody said, clearing his throat, 'that unless you really hadda, you know, wake her up and ask her things, maybe what we could do here, we could then just go back out, and close the door behind us?"
"And then she wouldn't ever know that we were in here; you're tryin' to say that to me, Steve? Nobody else'd know that I made you invade this unit this morning?" Merrion was at the bathroom door again. He paused, smiling, and waited for Brody's reply. He could hear Janet snoring peacefully in the next room. Brody did not answer.
"Steve?" Merrion said. "You still out there? Haven't gone into a panic here, run out on me here, have you? Certainly hope not. You're my witness here, you know, everything I did was kosher, absolutely by the book, from the minute I stepped in. Can't afford to have you leave me in here now, all by myself."
"Well," Brody said, drawing it out, 'no, I didn't do that. I was just thinking here was that if there wasn't any need, you know, to wake her up, well, it does seem as though she's sleeping pretty sound. Doesn't look like she's gonna wake up by herself."
"Not unless somebody shows up here with a howitzer and shoots it off in the kitchen, no, I don't think she will," Merrion said. "But I'm still gonna wake her up, Steve, no matter what you say here, and you might as well deal with it it's gonna happen." He pushed the bathroom door all the way open, flipping the light switch outside as he went in. The light did not come on and he hesitated in mid-stride, flipping the switch again. The light did not come on. "Because this bozo she's been hangin' out with's got a pretty vivid history of being dangerous.
"And therefore what I'm doing here today," he said, using his left hand to pull the shower curtain back, 'is first seeing if I can find out… oh oh. Uh oh.
"Yeah," he said, looking down at the two brown knobby knees protruding from the grey-cloudy soapy water in the middle of the tub, and under the handles and the faucet and the drain shutoff, the white hair-dryer tethered by its own white cord to the white extension cord, half-submerged between the two feet underneath the faucet at the front of the tub. He could make out the shins and calves of the lower legs buckled up behind the ugly feet, and beyond the knees the black-haired swarthy head with brown staring eyes in the gaping face above the milky surface at the back.
"What?" Brody said from the other room. "What's going on in there?
Everything all right?"
"Yeah, oh yeah," Merrion said, making a brief dismissive brushing gesture with his right hand against his pantsleg. "Yeah, everything's fine here. Well, everything's all right for me, I mean, in here, and probably for you." He heard Brody come into the bathroom behind him.
"But I don't think it is for him. And if what I'm seein's what I think it is I'm seeing, and I'm damned sure that it is, I don't think it's gonna be all right much longer for our friend Miss Janet out there. Not for some time at least. She's probably in for some excitement, and then a nice long rest. Although maybe not; her lawyer'll be glad to see those bruises. This naked gentleman in front of us I suspect is Lowell Chappelle, and also that he's somewhat dead."
He yanked the curtain back all the way and stood looking down at the shiny-black-haired dark-skinned man in the tub, his eyes staring and mouth frozen open in the head that looked as though it had been impaled on the rigid neck sticking out of the surface of the grey water covering the shoulders and the torso of the submerged body. "Yes, now I'm sure of it," he said. "No longer any question in my mind he's completely fuckin' dead. My guess is that in this very bathtub, Steve, the late Lowell Chappelle, former well-known desperado, learned last night after a few drinks that his electrifying girlfriend didn't like it when he hit her. Just before he became truly, fuckin', dead."
He turned aside to let Brody step up to the tub beside him. "You wanna take a look here, Steve? See you recognize him? After all, you know the guy, seen him around, when he was breathin' and so forth. Before this terrible shock. I'd turn the light on for you but I think the fuse's blown."
Merrion paused expectantly but Brody did not respond. He continued to stare down into the tub. "He kind of stinks, a little," he said. "I would have to say." He stepped back and looked up at Merrion. "You think we should get someone, see if they can, you know, get him out of here maybe, and then maybe do something with him? Undertaker, something? Can't just leave him like this, I don't think, can we? It wouldn't be right to do that. At least not for me, the building and all. We should do something, I think."
Merrion took Brody's left elbow with his right hand and turned him around to face the bathroom door, propelling him toward it at the same time. "Indeed we should do something, Steve," he said. "You should do something and I should do something, and then after that we should both of us do absolutely nothing. Until the cops get here, and then it'll be all in their hands."
"The cops?" Brody said, momentarily resisting. "You really sure we need alia that stuff, get the cops up here? TV cameras and stuff, alia trouble they make?"
"Well, yeah," Merrion said, getting him going again and steering him toward the doorway onto the landing. Janet snored comfortably in the reclining chair, "Yeah, I do think we should have the cops come up and all, it's traditional, you know? Someone looks like he's been murdered, and you find the body? Well, the cops like it if you give them a call. Invite them to come up and look the place over. See there's anything they might like to take note of and so forth in case they decide, later on, they'd like to accuse someone of killing whoever it was, and maybe punish them. A little, anyway. That's the sort of thing they do. And when you help them to do that, they appreciate it.
You don't call them, they get mad. My experience's always been that if you can do something that cops appreciate, it makes life a lot easier in the long run to do it; I have always found that.
"So the first thing I think we should do is shut the door and lock it, and have you stand in front of it. We do not want Janet to wake up and figure what we're doin' here, and then decide that this'd be a perfect time to take a hike. Then right after that I am gonna pick the phone up know I saw one, we came in; oh yeah, there it is there, right there by the corner 'frigerator – call ah cops an' get 'em up here, tell 'em what we found. It'll be their baby then."
"You think she murdered him?" Brody said.
Merrion shoved him toward the hallway door. Brody lurched forward. "Go over there and shut the fuckin' door, Steve," he said. "Shut the door and lock it and then lean against it, and don't let nobody out, while I get the cops up here and tell 'em how Janet LeClerc killed her boyfriend in the bathtub by switchin' on her hair-dryer an' throwin' it inna tub with him after he fell asleep inna warm water. He'd had a hard day's work getting' his belly full of beer and beatin' his meat and givin' his girlfriend a good beatin'. Betcha when that Conair splashed it got his attention. Helluva thing to do to a man, I must say. Jesus, what a surprise. Bops the daffy girlfriend in the eye, just a little innocent fun, and what does she do but electrocute him.
I don't know how long he lived after she did it, but I will bet you one thing sure: not long enough to forget it."
"I can't," Brody said, after he had shut the door and had shaken himself to regain his composure, watching Merrion punch numbers on the phone while Janet snored efficiently by the window, "I can't believe she'd do that. She could've done that to him. I never saw a side of her that'd make me think she'd do an awful thing like that, just go and kill a man. Never in a million years."
"I know it," Merrion said, hearing the phone begin to ring at the police station. "I'm the same way too. I can never believe it either.
As many times I've seen it happen, I still can't make myself believe it. They always tell you, every time, they promise you, that they will be good boys and girls. And then something like this happens. It shakes your faith in human nature… Hello? Yeah, Amby Merrion. Got a homicide to report. No, I'm not a cop, I'm the clerk of court. Yeah that's me, I am the guy: I know everything."
At 1:45 on the afternoon of the second Friday in November, US District Court Judge Barrie Foote stood up scowling at the end of the table in the library of her chambers. She wadded the bag containing the debris of her lunch and threw it overhand, hard, at the wastebasket in the corner, clanking it off the near edge. "Bummer," she said, 'shit." She walked over to the corner, picked it up and threw it down hard into the basket. Then she returned to the head of the table, sat down and pushed the buzzer on her phone, saying: "Tell Sandy to send in the clowns."
She was refolding her New York Times when she heard Sandy Robey, talking to someone behind him, open the outer door and come through her office into the library. Geoffrey Cohen, Arnold Bissell and Merrion followed. The judge cast the paper aside and stood up. "Gentlemen," she said.
"Lizzie'll be right along with her machine, Judge," Robey said. "I assume you want this on the record." He took his usual chair at the opposite end of the table, near the door.
"Oh, by all means on the record," the judge said. "If you'll all be seated gentlemen, we'll be able to get underway on whatever it is we're doing here I'm not entirely clear on it myself, so you'll have to enlighten me as soon as she arrives. I'd suggest you, Geoff, here on my left, and your client, next to you. I'm assuming he's Mister Merrion."
"That's correct, your Honor," Cohen said. He wore grey flannel trousers, a heather-blue Harris tweed two-button jacket, a blue button-down shirt and a pine-patterned dark blue silk tie. His brown van Dyke was faultlessly groomed.
"Mister Merrion," the judge said.
"Afternoon, your Honor," Merrion said, neutrally. He wore a dark blue blazer, grey flannel slacks, a grey shirt and a tie that Cohen had affably described as 'hideous," red, with gold triangles interlocked kaleidoscopic ally His face was taut and although he had nothing in his hands he moved gingerly, as though carrying a possibly explosive parcel.
"And you, Arnie, here, on my right," the judge said.
Elizabeth Gibson, a stocky black woman in her forties in a tight brownish-grey striped suit with a brown sueded collar, her greying hair bunned tightly back, stomped into the room on her two short heavy legs carrying her stenotype machine by the chrome standard connecting it to stubby tripod legs. She set it down next to Bissell, sat and began to type.
"All right," the judge said, 'we're now in business. If you'd identify the matter for the record here now, Sandy."
This'd be United States of America versus John Doe, civil docket number Ninety-five-dash-eight- hundred-seventy-four, In re Ambrose Merrion,"
Robey said.
"And if counsel'd identify yourselves now for the record, please?"
Foote said.
"Assistant United States Attorney Arnold Bissell for the government,"
Bissell said. He was thirty-four years old, six-two, about a hundred-fifty pounds, his blond hair in a Fifties-retro pompadour up swept in the front. It made his head look disproportionately small.
His chin was narrow. Ever since learning from classmates at Cornell Law School why his future as a poker player was not bright, he tried very hard at all times to keep his face expressionless, lest he reveal his trial strategy prematurely and give his opponent time to devise tactics to defeat it. Discerning his effort, opposing counsel misconstrued his apprehensive prudence as slyness, making it plain they distrusted him before he had given them any reason. Perceiving their mistrust as unwarranted hostility, and resenting it as unjust, he often acted precipitously and unpredictably. Those actions created surprises, the situation litigators fear most and therefore loathe as sneaky, thus inadvertently validating their initial suspicions that he was underhanded. Angered, they felt justified retaliating. Judges, most having been trial lawyers, tended to sympathize with them. They exercised their discretion not only to allow Bissell's opponents to get even with him, but to make sure that jurors understood the provocation.
That made Bissell feel persecuted, wounded and friendless, prompting him to become harsh and scornful. In his two years as a federal prosecutor the vicious cycle had happened repeatedly; he acquired the reputation as 'a shifty prick, a sneak, and one rude cocksucker." He became discouraged; his increasingly perfunctory efforts to deal civilly and pleasantly with opponents he encountered for the first time were usually greeted with disdain.
Mindful that United States Attorneys with hopes of future federal judgeships are ill-advised to discharge troublesome assistants whose families' political contributions have been generous enough to bring them invitations to state dinners at the White House, the Chief Assistant US Attorney in Boston had settled for excluding him from civil matters and minor criminal cases. "For you this's not a promotion; it's purely damage-control, the only way I can get any use out of you. We now know your only chance of winning is by making sure the defendant's someone the jury'll dislike more'n they've come to dislike you, bite clean through their lower lips and convict him by default. Otherwise they'll ignore the evidence and acquit the bastard, just to give you the finger."
"Geoffrey Cohen, counsel for Ambrose Merrion," Cohen said. "Mister Merrion is also present."
"And also for the record, before we get started here," the judge said.
"Several years ago Attorney Cohen was my personal lawyer, providing excellent counsel during my divorce. Mister Bissell, I take it you and your superiors in the US Attorney's office in Boston are aware of this?"
"We were aware of that, your Honor," Bissell said. "We perceive no potential problem of prejudice or bias inhering in your past attorney-client relationship with Mister Cohen."
"And so I take it the US Attorney's office does not wish me to recuse myself from this proceeding, voluntarily, as I am willing to do is that right?"
"That is correct," Bissell said.
The judge exhaled. "Sorry to hear it," she said.
Bissell frowned. "Beg pardon, your Honor?"
"Oh, nothing," she said. "I'm not in a very good mood today. This morning we had a civil case unexpectedly settle. Ordinarily this'd be a development I'd welcome, parties finally able to come to an agreement without taking up any more of the court's time; too bad they couldn't've done it sooner. But this one was different. Wrongful Death action, but quite unusual. This was the dead parachutist.
Remember him? The landscaper from Suffield, Nicholas Hardigrew. Summer before last. Took off from Barnes Airport, one of a party with four other sky divers, planning to jump over Conway. He was experienced; over the course of several years he'd done it a good many times without even spraining an ankle. As far as anyone seems to know, everything went fine, according to the book. He was third in the chain at the door, so two people saw him leave the plane and drop clear of the tail wing That's when you're supposed to pull the ripcord. When he went out his hands were in the proper position. But for some reason his chute didn't open.
"The case was about the reason. His family's theory as the plaintiffs was straight res ipsa loquitur. They don't know what went wrong with the parachute, whether it was some defect in the chute itself or the person who packed it didn't do it properly. They do know and'd proven, at least to my satisfaction that he was a veteran sport parachutist.
People who'd jumped with him considered him highly skilled. He knew all the pre-flight and in-flight precautions, proper safety procedures.
He was famous for being meticulous, going through the pre-jump checklist, every item double-checked. They noticed nothing different this time, can't explain why his chute didn't open. Dead men tell no tales, but for his family his death speaks eloquently; somewhere there was a defect. Someone had to've been negligent.
"The defendants are the parachute manufacturer and the technicians at the airport who packed it. They can't account for it any other way than by saying it must've been suicide. The packing's a two-person procedure: one packs and another inspects. Both of the people who prepared his equipment said it passed muster. He was face-down when he hit on a hard-packed clay surface.
His thumb and fingers were still in the D-ring. The chute took the same terminal-velocity impact he did; that probably affected it.
Allowing for that, the people who inspected it after the incident said they couldn't find any evidence that it'd been tampered with since it left the packers' custody. They found no indication of pre-impact defect of materials or workmanship; no fatigue-condition of components, wear and tear, before the impact, that prevented it from deploying.
"Obviously it hadn't. The glaring question is Why. The investigators said they found no indication that it hadn't been activated properly, but they couldn't rule that out. He might've had a sudden cramp in his hand so he was unable to pull the ripcord at the precise moment he planned; caused him to panic, and freeze. They can't tell. Maybe the ripcord snagged a little, gave him more resistance than he was used to, and that made him panic and freeze. Again, no way to tell. Maybe, maybe he didn't pull the cord and never meant to; the fatal defect was the human condition. As far as the defense experts can see, everything else was just fine.
"The defense team put on one eyewitness, another experienced parachutist, fourth in the chain that day. She said she could see him part of the way down, until she pulled her ripcord and her chute opened, but he just kept on free-falling. She doesn't think he ever tried to pop his. She saw no sign he was having a problem or struggling with it. She said it looked to her like he just kept his hands on the pack in front of him, head sort of bowed, "looking down, almost as though he'd been praying." He went by the other divers who'd gone out ahead of him; since their chutes were open and his wasn't, he was now dropping much faster than they were. Their depositions said they didn't have time to see much, and anyway they were too shocked and horrified to've noticed much anyway. He had goggles on and they were too far away to see whether he had his eyes open.
"Nobody on either side ever really addressed the issue that I would have thought to be central to the case. Why was he washed out of Jump School? He never told anyone, so far as we know. He always said he didn't know. The Army lost his records in a fire some years ago. Now no one could track down the people in his unit. Did someone there think maybe the kid had a death wish? Or was the reason for washing him out so insignificant, and so long ago, nobody even remembers? Well for sure, no one knows now.
"So there we had it: either it was a mysterious accident and we'll never know what caused it, or else this successful, healthy, well-to-do family-man, real zest for life, movie-star good-looking and very well-liked, apparently happy, killed himself for some reason we'll never know.
"This one I wanted to go to the jury. Then at least we would've had a six-person consensus of which explanation's the likeliest. Of course they might not've been able to dope it out either; would've come back reporting a deadlock. But evidently both sides, after hearing each other's case go in and watching how the jury seemed to be taking it, came to the same conclusion: letting the jury decide it was taking more risk than they wanted. The defendants pre-trial offered sixty-five thousand; how they arrived at that figure I do not pretend to know. The family made the customary multi-million-dollar demand. In the pre-trial conferences I had the clear impression that they'd settle only if they got the whole pot in the defendants' liability insurance pool, three million dollars. So the trial accomplished something for both sides. The family gets a million-one that they wouldn't have if they hadn't sued, around eight hundred thousand after they pay their lawyer. And the underwriters, after they pay their experts and lawyers, get to keep about a million and a half they might've lost.
"That leaves us with a third mystery: If all of the evidence'd come in, what would the jury've decided? Now we'll never know that answer either. I feel cheated. I suppose I'm being childish. I want life to be neat, with clear cut answers. Never mind about the money: I want to know why Nick Hardigrew died. But life isn't neat, so I don't.
"Anyway," she said, 'just what've we got on here this afternoon?
Something a bit simpler, perhaps? One of you gentlemen want to tell me what it's about, so I can put my steel-trap mind to work on it?"
"Why don't you kick it off, Arnie?" Cohen said. "We're sort of coming in here in the middle of things. I'm not sure we've got it all straight."
"Sure," Bissell said. "Back in February, the US Attorney directed the Political Corruption Unit to undertake a very broad-gauged investigation of contracts awarded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and its sub-divisions; counties; cities and towns; various and sundry authorities port, turnpike, state reservations, water and so forth.
"What he had in mind was really a massive undertaking. He told us to develop a data base of every contract, bid and no-bid, that's wound up costing the Commonwealth taxpayers more than one hundred thousand dollars, awarded during the past twenty years. Going back to the middle Seventies; covering not only contracts for projects expected to cost more than a hundred thousand, but also contracts originally awarded for lesser amounts which as a result of cost-overruns exceeded the one-hundred-thousand floor."
"Gracious," Cohen said. "That must've been a huge project. Who got the contract for that work? How much did the taxpayers have to pay him7. Must've been 'way over one hundred grand."
"It was done in-house," Bissell said, grimly, biting off his words. "It wasn't contracted out. The capability was already in place. The FBI and the IRS and the GAO have plenty of people and lots of machinery to gather data and crunch numbers, analyze what they come up with, spit out the files that meet stated criteria. The employees were trained and in place. It didn't cost the taxpayers one extra dime to have them doing this work."
"Right," Cohen said. "Instead of some other work. In the spring of the year with Tax Day coming up, when a civilian'd think the IRS'd probably have enough coming in to keep occupied but what do civilians know, huh? To the government it was a free play not just more government waste."
"Your Honor," Bissell said, "I realize this's an informal session and all, but could I ask you to please instruct Attorney Cohen to let me get on the record why we're here? If that's what he wanted me to do, when he requested this session? Because if he's going to sit there baiting me like this and make me spend all my time fending him off, we'll never get anywhere here."
The judge nodded. "Put a lid on it, Geoff, would you please? I do have the afternoon free, which I certainly didn't expect. But I bet if I try I can find one or two other pending matters that'd warrant my attention." Cohen pretended to pout. She chuckled and shook her head. "Go ahead, Arnie," she said. "If he doesn't behave I'll hold him in contempt, along with his client."
Merrion looked at the judge the way a cornered cat measures a large menacing dog, calculating how much damage it can do before the dog mauls it. She saw this and was angered for a moment, but then reconsidered. "Excuse me for a moment, Arnie," she said, putting up her right hand as Bissell started to speak. "Mister Merrion," she said, "I think I might've just made a needlessly provocative remark. If it sounded threatening, I apologize; that was not my intention."
"Thank you, your Honor," Merrion said, surprise in his eyes.
"Certainly," the judge said. "Now, Arnie, if you would."
"We haven't completed the data collection," Bissell said. "It'll probably take another year, at least. But this is a rolling program.
We're not waiting until we've finished collecting all the data before we start our analysis. We're initiating new grand jury proceedings contemporaneously, each time the data profile another cohering and discrete cell of individuals we call 'em hives, or nests isolating them as it were, picking them off one at a time. Our hope is to keep pace as much as possible between the data-profiling and the field investigations that producing the actual evidence corroborating or contradicting, also possible but unlikely what the data tell us to expect. Otherwise we're going to face a terrible backlog down the line. This particular John Doe investigation we've got underway both in Boston and out here started during the first week of August."
Cohen interrupted wearily. "I know I'm not supposed to interrupt, your Honor, but could we ask Arnie to spare us all the disingenuous John Doe make-believe about who's the target here? Dan Hilliard's in the cross-hairs; it's been common knowledge since the day after they chose him, which was the day before the leaks began."
"John Doe's a formality," Bissell said coolly, 'custom and usage. We know rumors and leaks occur. They start the minute we begin serving subpoenas. We know it'll happen, so we don't issue subpoenas until we're pretty sure a given investigation's going to yield a prosecutable case. Usually our expectations turn out to be right; we develop a prosecutable case against the person or persons our subpoenas seemed to point to. Therefore when we complete the investigative phase and enter the formal accusatory phase, the rumors turn out to be true. Post hoc, propter hoc.
"That doesn't mean we start the rumors. We don't. The minute some bank treasurer is subpoenaed as the Keeper of the Records, specifying whose records we want, he knows who we're after. The fat goes in the fire and the gossip's in the wind. We can't stop it, so we've done the next best thing: stopped worrying about it.
"So, everyone knows who we're after? Usually. But experienced criminal lawyers know we never publicly name any target 'til he's been indicted. We can't, we're not allowed to. Constitution states no citizen shall be held to answer for a capital offense or crime of infamy except upon presentment of grand jury. Remember, Geoff?
Black-letter law."
Cohen stared at him thoughtfully, picking at the edge of his lower right front tooth with the nail of his left ring-finger, saying nothing.
"Children, children," the judge said. "Get on with it, Arnie."
"The review of state and state sub-division contracts awarded to private companies and individuals in the Western District showed a striking correlation between people benefiting from them and people who'd been heavy financial supporters of Daniel Hilliard's political career major campaign contributors. Hilliard is the queen bee; his rich pals are his worker bees. Or ants, as you prefer."
"I object to this, your Honor," Cohen said. "There's no need for Mister Bissell's gratuitous and demeaning insults."
"I'm sorry," Bissell said. "You said John Doe offended you. I thought you wanted me to use the same vocabulary here we use among ourselves when we're discussing people like your client here today."
"I don't want any more of trash-talk out of either one of you," the judge said. "Do you want me to make it clearer than that? Get to work."
"We have a number of individuals under investigation for their dealings with Hilliard, your Honor," Bissell said. "I'm going to use Haskell Sanderson, Junior, for an example. He began doing business with the state several years before the opening date wed arbitrarily chosen for our investigation, but when we saw the pattern emerging in those years, we went back to his first state contracts. The pattern was clear from the start. Sanderson began contributing generously to Hilliard. Very soon he got his first state printing contract. He increased his contributions. He got more state printing contracts. Until the state campaign financing law took effect, he contributed between five and ten thousand dollars to the Hilliard Committee every two-year election cycle, equivalent to thirty or forty thousand today.
"When the statute prohibited corporate donations and limited individual contributions to two thousand dollars per individual per cycle, Sanderson complied. He reduced his contributions to the statutory amount. But his wife, when he had one, gave two thousand dollars, and his son, who claims to be a golf pro but spends half the year tending bar, gave two thousand a cycle. Four of Sanderson's employees gave a thousand each. Hilliard's total receipts from Sanderson were unaffected by the new law.
"In the past twenty-five years or so Sanderson's state printing contracts've totalled several million dollars. He holds three today, long-term agreements worth in excess of nine hundred thousand dollars over the next two years."
"Dan Hilliard hasn't been in the House since Nineteen-eighty-four,"
Cohen said, at the same time gripping Merrion's left forearm to prevent him from speaking.
"Sanderson met his pals in the Procurement branch while Hilliard was still in office," Bissell said wearily. "He bought what he needed while the store was open. By the time Hilliard left the legislature, Sanderson was entrenched. Hilliard did such a great job he doesn't need him anymore.
"His company isn't even in the district Hilliard represented. Sanderson never lived in it but he became a heavy Hilliard backer about thirty years ago. His friend Carl Kuiper told him it could be profitable. He introduced them. Kuiper discovered very early there was money to be made by people on good terms with Dan Hilliard. Before he retired and sold his electrical contracting company to GE, it was the largest such company privately owned in western Massachusetts, due in no small part to its robust relationship with the state Department of Procurement and Services.
"Same pattern. Kuiper didn't live in Hilliard's district. His business wasn't in it either. But he jumped on the Hilliard bandwagon right at the beginning, back in Nineteen-sixty-two, when Hilliard was making his big move from Holyoke alderman to state representative. Five thousand a cycle, regular as clockwork, 'til the limits took effect.
Then he went to the nominee-dodge too; his wife and his two kids suddenly developed an interest in state politics they'd never shown before: the new program was two thousand from him; a thousand from his wife; and a thousand more each from each of his kids including his daughter, nurturing her deep interest in the Massachusetts legislature from her home in Santa Barbara.
"Since those five-grand-a-cycle donations began, our figures show Kuiper's company's raked in over nineteen million dollars' worth of state contracts. "And before that?" you ask." He snickered. "Before that Kuiper Electric, in business for almost ten years, had had one state contract: Eleven thousand dollars' worth of repairs to lighting systems in the barns at the Berkshire County Agricultural Society Fairgrounds and racetrack out in Hancock.
"Those're illustrations," Bissell said. "I'm not going to show all the files to you, uncover our whole hand at this point in the game. But I can assure you that we've got a dozen more just like them. If you compare the list of Hilliard's major contributors to the list of individuals and companies that got fat while he was in office, what you see is a virtual template of political corruption; rampant corruption, corruption abounding. If you gave generously to Hilliard's campaigns, your gifts returned to you not a hundred- but a thousand-fold, at a minimum, in the form of fat state contracts. It's a textbook case of political chicanery and larceny. I know Mister Merrion's Dan Hilliard's close friend and associate, and he wont like hearing me say this, but Dan Hilliard is a common crook."
Merrion inhaled audibly, so that his chest visibly expanded, and he gripped the arms of his chair hard, so that his knuckles whitened.
Cohen grabbed Merrion's right forearm with his left hand and said:
"Your Honor, I know you want to move along as rapidly as possible, without a lot of bickering, but could I be heard? This's hard to take in silence."
"Go ahead, Geoff," the judge said.
"In the first place," Cohen said, "I represent Amby Merrion not Dan Hilliard. Bob Pooler represents Dan. So, when I respond to these attacks, I'm at a disadvantage I assume Bob would not be. But I'm sure Bob'd include among the pieces of his far-better argument the reminder that the period of the Seventies and Eighties covered by' he deepened his voice 'this rolling program' he resumed his normal baritone 'were decades of unprecedented prosperity, not just in western Massachusetts but across the entire country. And decades as well of galloping inflation that brought us to the point we're now at, where what was worth a buck when Hilliard first began to run now costs at least three.
"And in the second place, if Dan Hilliard hadn't been attentive to the best interests of the whole region; if instead he'd worked solely within the narrow confines of his own legislative district, he never could've forged the alliances he needed to rise to chairman of Ways and Means, and the influence to channel those state contracts out here.
"The businessmen and manufacturers who supported him all those years weren't acting purely selfishly. Sure, they were in it for themselves, and many of them prospered. But so did their hundreds of employees.
And therefore so did the merchants and builders, and lawyers, and all the other people who serve our communities. Property values increased, and therefore so did tax revenues. We all depend upon a healthy industrial economy as the foundation of our prosperity.
"Today if we don't have that, we're a heck of a lot closer to having it than we were when Dan Hilliard first ran for office. Those contracts Mister Bissell now finds so sinister were important building blocks, vital to this region. Coming from the eastern part of the state Gloucester, did you tell me, we were chatting outside there?"
Bissell nodded. Cohen continued. "Yeah, I thought so; growing up there the coastline as he did, Mister Bissell wouldn't know this, but until that state work began coming inland, out here, what we had was a predominantly agricultural economy. Our industries, the mills and factories, had first declined, then folded up. The economy was in sad shape. We were in the doldrums. Young people were leaving; they had no choice. Either they went into farming, like it or not, assuming they could find farming jobs, or else they moved away.
Those state contracts meant they didn't have to; they could stay. Some who had left came back, renewed family connections, once there was work for them here. Those contracts were tickets of admission to a new world of light-manufacturing and skilled blue-collar work, and the new incomes that came with it. A better life for all of us.
"I sound like a candidate myself now. If that record were mine, I might very well be. By rights I ought to do well. A politician with that history to present, I'd deserve to be re-elected by a landslide.
But that record isn't mine to brag about. It belongs to Danny Hilliard. It's a good one, a wonderful record of accomplishment. Keep in mind that this is coming from the man Dan Hilliard's ex-wife hired to hammer him with everything he could lay his hands on, and we did that. But never once did we attack his fine record in office. No one who knows him ever has. The people who backed his campaigns invested their money wisely and well. Are they and he therefore now to be denounced for what they accomplished, and held up to scorn and disgrace ?"
Bissell snorted. Merrion glared at him. Cohen and the judge ignored both of them. "In the third place," Cohen said, 'and perhaps the one that should most concern this court, Dan Hilliard last stood for office in Nineteen-eighty' two We all know why he didn't seek a twelfth term; as I say, I represented his wife: revelations of his untidy personal life turned many of his constituents against him. It was a very messy and unpleasant time for everyone concerned, but that untidy private life, as scandalous as it may've been, was not against federal law.
"The US Attorney now proposes in effect to rewrite history, to impose a new and deeply cynical interpretation on the solid common cause Dan Hilliard made with his constituents, and the people who supported his campaigns. Mister Bissell and his bosses in their wisdom now decree that what we saw as a marvelous alliance bringing great and greatly needed benefits to the Pioneer Valley, we were deluded, just plain wrong. They say it was a corrupt bargain.
"The idea's preposterous on its face, but grant it, arguendo: Dan Hilliard last sought elective office well over ten years ago. The state Statute of Limitations is six years. The federal one is five.
Except for murder or treason, of course neither of which I've heard my learned friend here mention, at least as yet. So: why in the world is the federal watchdog prowling around out here with his Operation Rolling Blunder, snarling and snapping at Danny Hilliard, and the people who backed him for the office he filled so well?
"If it weren't so scary in terms of the damage he can do with it, you'd think Mister Bissell's mission was a new mega-death computer game for kids; thrills and chills and sound-effects, flashing lights and puffs of smoke, but in the real world, harmless. Too bad it isn't. This game's for much higher stakes; he's playing with real people's lives.
Is the US Attorney really spending all this money; wasting all this manpower; muddying spotless reputations helter-skelter; causing all this anguish when even if he could prove the acts were corrupt he couldn't prosecute them? Is that what this is, an exercise here? If it is, this's not law enforcement; this is abuse of authority, power run amok. If not, then what else is it?"
"Good question, Geoff," the judge said. "Ball's in your court now, Mister Bissell."
"Thank you, your Honor," he said. "Mister Cohen took umbrage at my description of this project before I finished outlining it. Of course we're quite aware that limitations have expired for prosecution of many if not most of the substantive offenses we believe to've been committed by Mister Hilliard and his co-conspirators chief among them Mister Merrion, which's why we've immunized him over the course of the years.
But I would point out to the court, and to Mister Cohen as well, that when we can prove that further acts, within the statute, have been committed in the course of that same, ongoing, conspiracy that underlay the earlier substantive acts; and that those more recent acts were also committed in furtherance of the purpose for which the conspiracy was formed; then by law we are permitted to claim relation back to the earlier offenses, and prove them, as part of the underlying, continuing scheme. Its fruition.
"In outline what we see here, your Honor, is a convoluted tripartite conspiracy, one branch still thriving, still returning excellent profits.
"The overall conspiracy," Bissell said, making an arch with his hands over the table, 'involved the campaign contributions. We see that one as the umbrella. It provided the shelter under which at least two more schemes could grow. The fund-raising, state-contract quid-pro-quo scheme's now functionally defunct; there's no further need for it. It's done the job Hilliard and Merrion designed it to do get Hilliard elected to office; gain access to and influence over the state contracting process; and in return get kickbacks disguised as campaign contributions. Dan Hilliard's retired; the contracts continue; those two set-ups, no longer needed, were allowed to atrophy.
"That's not the case with the other plot under the big umbrella. It survives and we can prove it.
"The first thing Hilliard and Merrion did was to create an organization that would work out of Holyoke in tandem with the voting machine that the Carnes brothers, Roy and Arthur, had put into place for themselves right after World War Two. A few years later they were joined by Roy's son, Roy Junior.
"The Carneses were very methodical. Arthur had come back from the war a wounded veteran and a hero. He had capitalized on that, parlayed the admiration and the sympathy he got into his political career. So Arthur was in charge of getting power. Meanwhile, Roy Senior was doing the day-to-day work of establishing and expanding the family's local real estate empire. Roy was in charge of getting wealth. In time Roy Junior, "Little Roy" or "Young Roy," came along to inherit the aldermanic seat vacated by Arthur when he ran for the House. Then he took Arthur's House seat when Arthur moved up to the Senate. Ultimately he succeeded to his uncle's Senate seat, after Arthur's death, and to much of the wealth his father had accumulated as well. Not exactly what Arthur and Roy had in mind, but still and all, pretty close.
"Their plan'd been that Little Roy would take the Senate seat when Arthur retired to the judgeship the two of them'd created for him, when they carved out the new Canterbury District during the late Fifties.
But Arthur died, disrupting their plans. Big Roy wasn't interested in the judgeship. He was too busy making lots of money running the real estate business. Little Roy had further political ambitions; it was too early for him to retire. Charles Spring, a close Carnes family friend, therefore became the first presiding judge.
"The Hilliard-Merrion scheme was conceived as a sort of a Carnes satellite. By necessity it was somewhat less ambitious; Hilliard had no war-wound to display and Merrion had no family cash to work with, but they had some impressive plans. The first was to get Hilliard elected to the board of aldermen. Roy Junior was the only second-generation Carnes with the political bug. If Hilliard could displace the lacklustre boob who'd won Roy's seat on the board of aldermen, he'd be positioned to go after Roy's seat in the House when Roy moved up to Arthur's Senate seat.
"In effect what he and Merrion proposed to the Carneses was that since they were temporarily fresh-out of political horses, Hilliard would serve as a surrogate Carnes. He'd hold down jobs they wanted to relinquish but still control, but lacked homebred manpower to fill.
He'd exercise the authority the jobs carried in consultation with Roy and Arthur; they in turn would back him. He even agreed to let them control his financing, in exchange for help in getting it, which in real terms meant they would control not only the power, but him.
"That sounded good to the Carneses. In Nineteen-sixty, with under-the-table help from them, Hilliard and Merrion pulled off their first victory. The Carneses were taking no chances; until Hilliard proved he could actually win, he was their clandestine candidate. That way if he lost they'd be free to dump him and look for a more popular stooge."
"Your Honor," Cohen said.
The judge put up her left hand. "I know, Geoff, I know. If you ever get this case before a jury, Arnie, you can say stuff like that in your closing argument. Until such time as that occurs, restrain yourself."
Bissell nodded. "Stand corrected, your Honor," he said, his expression showing no contrition. "The second objective was to exploit the leverage and visibility of the aldermanic seat to attract the contributions Hilliard would need to run for state rep, without stepping on any Carnes toes. That he and Merrion accomplished by courting the small businessmen and manufacturers who lived in the general vicinity and ran their businesses around the Carnes turf. On the perimeter. They did very well at this, so well that one or two years after his first House election, Hilliard commanded enough campaign funds to begin "helping out" candidates from other districts who either didn't like to raise money all the time, the way he did, or didn't get the kind of results he got, because they weren't as slick."
Merrion came forward in his chair. Cohen grabbed his arm again. The judge shook her head and sighed. "Arnie, I just cautioned you about provocative language, and now here you go and do it again. Keep in mind that you're in here because you want me to do something Mister Cohen opposes. Goading him and his client is not the best way to persuade me to do it."
Bissell nodded, his face showing resignation based upon dour foresight.
"That Lord Bountiful ability he had to bestow gifts upon less-affluent reps made Mister Hilliard a popular and respected House figure, far more so than his age or years of service ever would've suggested. Give the devil his due as well: Dapper Dan Hilliard's a likable man. Women, especially, like him," Judge Foote's face remained impassive, 'which as we know finally got him in trouble, but his charm worked on his male colleagues as well.
"The combination was a potent one. Even as a lowly two-term rep he had considerably more power on the Judicidary and the Ways and Means Committees than many five-and six-termers. He wasn't above using it for private purposes, either. When he and his wife decided she could no longer care for their severely retarded daughter at home, Hilliard threw his weight around to jump the queue and get her into the Walter J. Fernald School ahead of some thirty other children whose parents had been waiting as much as sixteen months to get their children in. He may be playing the gracious academic these days, but his arrogance then knew no bounds."
When he paused for breath the room was absolutely still.
Elizabeth Gibson, her fingers poised over the stenotype machine, stared at Bissell with her mouth open. Merrion and Cohen stared. Sandy Robey gaped. Judge Foote inhaled deeply but made no other sound.
Bissell seemed puzzled by the reaction. He frowned, but he was sufficiently unsure of himself so that he did not break the silence. At last Merrion, this time unrestrained by Cohen, said in a strangled low voice: "Donna Hilliard died in that hospital almost twenty years ago.
She was fourteen years old. She'd never said a word, or laughed. She'd never recognized her mother or her father; never fought with her brother and sister. She'd never played with other children; never had an ice cream cone. She'd never been to school. No one ever heard her laugh. No one ever saw her cry."
Gibson straightened up and typed into the machine what Merrion had just said. Cohen and the judge stirred, blinking. The judge cleared her throat. "Yes," she said, dragging it out and exhaling. She shook her head and blinked. She shook her head again. "I certainly have to hand it to you, Mister Bissell," she said, 'you're quite a piece of work.
Try to get on with what you were telling us. See if we can get out of here before you're challenged to a duel."
"All I was trying to say," Bissell said, appearing not to understand any of the reactions, 'is that political power is cumulative, iterative, in anybody's hands. The more Hilliard had of it, the more he found he could get. Because he had that kind of clout, he could make himself extremely useful to Roy Junior, pushing or retarding Senate bills on the House side. Roy in turn was only too pleased to reciprocate, guiding Hilliard's pet measures through the upper body.
That improved Hilliard's image on the House side, enabling him to do more for Carnes in the lower body.
"The result was that after a while there was a sort of merger of the Carnes and Hilliard interests. Now it was time for Hilliard and Merrion, in partnership with the Carneses, of course, to start lining their pockets, too. This was the second leg of their conspiratorial stool. Their ultimate goal was to obtain a high-paying lifetime sinecure for each of them in the public sector. Merrion's they wanted fairly soon; Hilliard would put off locating a cushy billet until he got tired of active politics, lost, or decided that he'd gone as far as he could go. But that didn't mean they were ruling out any good opportunities to steal that might crop up along the way to full employment.
"We're not clear whether Hilliard and Merrion expected to find their biggest bonanza in the Canterbury courthouse when Hilliard muscled through Merrion's appointment as third assistant clerk of court in Nineteen-sixty-six. What we do know is that events demonstrated that a bonanza did in fact exist: the Fourmen's Realty Trust. The Carneses, certainly never intending to divulge its existence to Hilliard or Merrion, much less share it with them, had been instrumental in its corrupt creation. But Mister Merrion, resourceful fellow that he is, found it. Six years later, he grabbed hold of a piece of it. From that point on, no matter what else came through or fell through, the Hilliard-Merrion partnership was a success.
"The Carneses Arthur in the Senate and Roy Junior in the House; Roy Senior still running the real estate business in Holyoke had made a fairly decent killing for themselves on the contract to build the Canterbury District Courthouse. So had their friends, as the first rule of crooked politics staying out of jail requires. Judge Spring was the head of the building committee. An ambitious young fellow named Larry Lane, an assistant clerk in the Chicopee District Court and desperate to get out of there, became Spring's first clerk. Spring knew he could therefore control him. He put him on the building committee, giving the Carnes family two votes out of five. Roy Carnes Senior got a third appointment. After that it was easy; the ballgame began in earnest.
"F.D. Barrows Construction Company rigged the bid and won the contract.
Barrows cut the corners on materials and labor; Spring and Lane and Roy Carnes approved each stage of construction and the progress payments therefore due. Spring set up the trust, Fourmen's Realty, to receive the money Barrows skimmed off the construction and kicked back to the other three. It wasn't a great deal of money, by today's standards: just under a hundred-forty grand. But we must keep in mind that they didn't steal it today; they took it before Nineteen-sixty. A good annual salary then was less than a tenth of that boodle creamed off the courthouse budget; by the standards of today what they stole would amount to about six-hundred-thousand dollars, a very respectable amount of loot.
"Over the years there were some changes made in the trust. The real estate-insurance man from Hampton Falls, Philip Fox, came in soon after it was formed. The reason was that he'd handled the construction bonds on the courthouse. The Commonwealth was having one of its periodic fits of public outrage about corruption. A state crime commission had been appointed. Fox knew too much to leave him out and maybe make him mad enough to talk. So the first four brought him in, diluting their shares but keeping him quiet hush money.
"Years went by. Fox died and his grandson Walter took his place. Lane died, leaving his to Merrion, in thanks for befriending him. Shrewdly.
The money kept on rolling in. Walter Fox died and his widow, Diane, took his place on the trust. Later on, she agreed to fill the place her husband had expected to serve on the building committee for the new Canterbury Municipal Complex. Mister Merrion was also on that committee. Mrs. Fox wasn't originally from around here. She's from Wisconsin. Fairly soon after these developments, she and Mister Merrion entered into a close personal relationship."
"Is that supposed to mean something?" Merrion said, growling.
"Take it easy, Amby," Cohen said. "Take it easy here."
"Stay away from the personal stuff, Mister Bissell," the judge said.
"We avoid private matters in this corner of the world."
"I meant no aspersion on Mrs. Fox or Mister Merrion, either, in that regard," Bissell said. "The point I was making is that Mrs. Fox, being from Wisconsin, probably wasn't familiar with the Massachusetts politics of self-enrichment. So, to enlist her in any later scheme to skim contracts for construction of the Canterbury Municipal Complex, as the make-up of the committee would suggest that he and Hilliard had in mind, Mister Merrion would've had to explain the procedures to her. He perhaps feared she might not like the idea of milking state contracts might even strongly disapprove. And because they do appear to have embarked on what's now a long-standing relationship quite soon after her husband's death, our surmise is that his fear of her disapproval, and what she might do to express it, caused him to abrogate any plans he and Hilliard might have had to plunder the project. Whatever the reason, so far in our review it doesn't appear to have been skimmed."
"Hurrah, hurrah," Merrion murmured, before Cohen could silence him.
"Mister Merrion," the judge said calmly, "I know this must be very trying for you, very hard to sit through without making some response.
But I also know you're a court officer, not only made of good stern stuff but also aware of the rules of decorum we enforce here, even when we're in chambers.
"I'll make an allowance for you this time, because I do think," shifting her gaze to Bissell, 'that the assistant US attorney has gone about as far as I'm willing to allow without disciplining him." Bissell worked his mouth and swallowed. She returned her gaze to Merrion, stretching her left arm out on the table and lowering her head to sight along it at him. "But please don't do it again." She kept her smile very small. "Do we understand each other, Mister Merrion?"
"Yes, your Honor," Merrion said, looking chagrined.
She straighted up and nodded. "Good," she said with satisfaction. She turned to look at Bissell. "And how about you, Mister Bissell? We're both on the same page too, I trust?"
"Oh yes, your Honor," Bissell said without repentance, "I understand your view. But once again, when I said that, I did not mean…"
"Nooo," the judge said, 'the matter's closed. Go on now and please finish."
"For whatever the reason, the Fourmen's Trust thereafter does not appear to have been further enriched by any infusions of capital other than the contributions required to buy out the interests of departing members. Judge Spring was the next to die, after Philip Fox. Then Roy Cames, Junior, liquidated all his family holdings here in order to relocate down south. F.D. Barrow, Walter Fox and Merrion bought out those two shares. Then Barrow died and his son succeeded him. And as I've said, when Walter Fox died his wife Diane took his place.
"So the Fourmen's Trust as it's now constituted has three named shareholder-beneficiaries, two men and a woman. Otherwise the way it's operated stayed the same for coming up on almost forty years now, still turning a neat profit, close to two hundred grand a year. All through those years, right down to the present day, each and every one of the direct beneficiaries of profits earned on the ill-gotten gains that funded the Fourmen's Trust has scrupulously and faithfully reported, as ordinary income, the annual distributions that the trust has made from earnings, and paid all federal and state taxes due very substantial sums.
"But during those years there has also been an indirect beneficiary, Daniel Hilliard. We find in his tax returns for beginning in Nineteen-seventy-three no evidence, no indication, he ever reported as income the amounts by which he benefited from the Fourmen's Trust, or paid any taxes on them."
"For the simple reason," Merrion began roughly.
"Shut up, Amby," Cohen said, spinning in his chair and grabbing Merrion's arm again. Then: "Your Honor, may I have a word with my client?"
"Certainly," the judge said. "Do you want a recess so you can take him outside and talk to him privately?" '1 don't think that'll be necessary, your Honor," Cohen said, 'but I would like this to be off the record."
"I'll give you that," the judge said. "Off the record. You probably don't mind hearing that, do you, Lizzie?"
"Sweetest words I heard today," the stenographer said, clasping her hands together, palms outward, and stretching her arms out in front of her, then flexing her back against the chair.
"Look, Amby," Cohen said. "I warned you you wouldn't like this; sitting through this and having to keep your mouth shut. And I told you you shouldn't come. But you insisted, said you could do it. You wouldn't let him get to you. So do it. Or if you can't do it, get out."
Merrion nodded, his face like an outcropping rock.
"I think we'll be all right now to go back on the record again, Judge,"
Cohen said.
"Very well," the judge said, 'we are back on the record. Mister Bissell, as you were saying?"
"I mentioned just a few moments ago," Bissell said, unable or unwilling to avoid looking pleased, 'that when Dan Hilliard and Mister Merrion pooled their resources back in Nineteen-sixty to get Hilliard elected alderman, they had several objectives in mind. The third one was to secure good lifetime jobs with the Commonwealth. Hilliard's would turn out to be the presidency of Hampton Pond Community College which with the help of his cronies in the House he tailor-made for himself. But his sinecure could wait; his political star was still on the rise.
"Merrion's situation was different. After a few years as Hilliard's district aide, he began to feel restless. A secure billet had to be found for him. One was. In Nineteen-sixty-six, Presiding Judge Charles Spring, no doubt at the direction of Roy Carnes, acting in turn at Hilliard's request, appointed Ambrose Merrion third assistant clerk of the Canterbury Court. Merrion and Lane later formed a friendship.
"That was Merrion's shrewd move. By all accounts, Lane'd been a heavy smoker all his life, and he also had a serious drinking problem. Soon after he retired, late in Nineteen-seventy, already diagnosed with cancer, his family gave him an ultimatum: either he would quit drinking and undergo a grueling course of radiation and chemotherapy to arrest the disease, if not cure it, or he would have to leave.
"He chose to leave. He estranged himself from his wife and children and moved into an apartment in the three-story building at Sixteen-ninety-two Eisenhower Boulevard built by the Fourmen's Realty Trust, financed with funds its beneficiaries and trustees had skimmed off the courthouse construction. Lane died in October of Nineteen-seventy-two.
"Early in Nineteen-seventy-three," Bissell said, "Mister Merrion used a portion of the first distribution he received from that trust, as Lane's heir and successor, to take advantage of an expansion of membership rolls at Grey Hills Country Club. The Club took this action for the first and only time in order to finance extensive repairs and improvements expected to cost more than a million dollars three million today. That was eight hundred thousand more than the club's officers thought it wise to take out of available capital. The only alternative was to open the rolls to enough new members as would be necessary to offset the rest of the cost.
"Most of the old-money members opposed this. The only way to get their consent was to keep the number of new members admitted as small as possible a hundred was the absolute ceiling they would stand for. That meant the tariffs had to be extremely high well over eight thousand dollars a head. The invitation to apply was posted on Groundhog Day.
"If the response left the board of governors chagrined, they had a right to be. Clearly they could've gotten more; the quota was over subscribed before the end of February. The rolls were once again closed, but now Daniel Hilliard and Ambrose Merrion were listed upon them.
"Membership has remained firmly closed ever since, your Honor," Bissell said. "For more than twenty years the governors of Grey Hills have been able to run this vast and luxurious resort, really; a famous, groomed-and-pampered, championship golf course on more than three hundred acres of prime real estate, surrounded with every possible amenity; with a seasonal staff of more than two hundred employees, eighty of whom work all the year 'round; entirely on the income generated by their four hundred dues-paying members' fees, and bills they incur at the club. One estimate we have says that the average annual member spends six thousand dollars a year.
"Six thousand dollars a year. One hundred and fifteen dollars a week.
At the minimum wage that's what a kid grosses working his way through college at a part-time job flipping burgers at McDonald's twenty-seven hours a week. For most of these people it buys at the most twenty-four weekend-rounds of golf. Six thousand dollars a year two hundred and fifty dollars a round. Joe Six-pack doesn't tee off at Grey Hills.
This is not a watering-hole for the common man. This a club for rich men, a closed society of very wealthy men. Yet there among their number we find recorded the names of Ambrose Merrion and Daniel Hilliard.
"How on earth did they get in there? What on earth are they doing there? Neither of these men, both of whom we would most likely describe as liberal populists, was born into a wealthy family. Neither one of them since the age of twenty-one has ever held any job other than the ones they've had on the public payroll. Yet if we allow for inflation and say the average annual cost of Grey Hills membership for these past twenty-two years was half of what we understand it is today, Mister Merrion's largesse in Mister Hilliard's behalf would amount to sixty-six thousand dollars. That on top of the eight-thousand-plus initiation fee and dues would be about seventy-five thousand dollars. All of which Merrion got from Lane's treasure chest, money Lane helped steal from us."
"Your Honor," Cohen said, "I must ask again to interrupt. Again we have Mister Bissell regaling us with stories that begin: "Once upon a time." We don't for one moment dispute the US Attorney's right to seek out crimes for prosecution if he thinks, as he seems to, there're too few in plain sight to keep his forces occupied. We don't quarrel with his privilege to go back in time far beyond the statute of limitations and rummage around as much as he likes, to see if he can then find something that will catapult him forward into the present tense, still clinging to a trailing string that he can pull on, like Orpheus to his Eurydice, to tow all of those old outrages forward under his cherished relation back. It seems like any case you managed to weave out of such flimsy stuff would be a pretty thin one, and a waste of the taxpayer's money, and unless you leave out ego, a personal desire for the limelight, it's mighty hard to see why he'd want to do it. But nevertheless, however poor his judgment seems to be, there's no arguing his right to spend his time this way if he wants to.
"Mister Merrion has now known since the last week in August; he didn't until then that Mister Bissell the week before had federal marshals serve a subpoena duces tecum on Mister Merrion's bank. It demanded the records of his checking and savings accounts much further back than the bank is able to go. They notifed him as they must and then of course turned over to the government everything they had. So, if my client ever had any notion of trying to claim he never paid any club dues, bills or fees in Mister Hilliard's behalf, as he did not, he now knows going in that the US Attorney can prove otherwise, and would certainly reward him for such impudence by indicting him for perjury.
"But even without that, why go through all of it? Why bother to have him before the grand jury? We'll stipulate he paid Mister Hilliard's initiation fee, annual dues, and a lot of miscellaneous other stuff at Grey Hills over the years. Thousands and thousands of dollars. We'll even give the US Attorney the explanation for Mister Merrion's strange and remarkable behavior which despite his formidable powers of data-collection and analysis, seems to have eluded him: Mister Merrion and Mister Hilliard are friends.
"It's as simple as that. They've been buddies for thirty-five years.
Dan Hilliard's former wife told me she used to tell her husband that if it hadn't been for her, and later on his girlfriends, people would've thought that he and Mister Merrion were gay. Mister Merrion's a bachelor, from a small family. His father died years ago. His mother's terminally ill, in a vegetative state; his brother and he are estranged. Dan Hilliard's the closest thing to "family" my client's ever had, all his adult life.
"Is it really surprising that he's treated Hilliard like an elder brother? Wouldn't you, or even Mister Bissell, as morally demanding as he is, think it appropriate to share a completely unexpected large inheritance which I assure you this was, no 'shrewd move' on his part, the windfall from the Lane estate with a family member? Or with someone who had filled, most faithfully, for years, the vacant family place?
"Of course you would. We all would. So our question here becomes:
Given the quantity and detail of the evidence that the US Attorney has outlined as already in his hands, what need or purpose except humiliation, can he possibly have for forcing Mister Merrion to testify against Dan Hilliard?"
"Your Honor please?" Bissell said. "I was getting to that. We don't know where Dan Hilliard got the money to put up the house in Bell Woods that he and his wife occupied until their divorce. We can't figure out where he got the money for the house on Martha's Vineyard. It may've been from innocent sources, bequests we can no longer track down. We doubt it, but it may have been. The Grey Hills money is different. We know where that money came from, and we also know he didn't earn it, or pay taxes on it, either.
"We anticipate that if we obtain an indictment alleging Mister Hilliard with criminally evading income taxes due and owing on the monies Mister Merrion paid to Grey Hills in his behalf, Mister Merrion may interpose as one defense for his friend the fact that he himself had paid income taxes on the money, before sending it to Grey Hills in Hilliard's behalf. Countering our allegation that the monies were not annual gifts but a bribe paid in annual installments as a stipend for Merrion's job and thus, constructively, income to Hilliard when paid to Grey Hills for his benefit Merrion would be able to tell the jury they were after-tax dollars in his hand, a gift to his pal Hilliard.
Exceeding the then-statutory lifetime limit of thirty thousand dollars; perhaps exposing them to civil penalties and interest, but negativing the criminal aspect of intent to evade income taxes."
"Mister Cohen?" the judge said, 'any comment here?"
"Just that that indeed would be part of the evidence Mister Merrion will give, if Mister Bissell brings about the unhappy event he just described," Cohen said.
"Secondly, your Honor," Bissell said smoothly, 'we anticipate that the grand jury may return an indictment alleging Mister Hilliard under color of his official authority sold a state office to, and extorted monies from, its occupant; and further that he conspired with Mister Merrion and others to sell, trade and traffic in a public office, and extort monies from its occupant. And further: alleging that he conspired with Mister Merrion and others to deprive the public of the rightful service and free and unfettered judgment of a public official in other words, alleging racketeering that Mister Merrion might interpose in Mister Hilliard's defense the claim that the monies he paid to Grey Hills in Mister Hilliard's behalf were not within the knowledge or the contemplation of the parties when Mister Hilliard arranged the clerkship, and were given of his own free will."
"Of course he would," Cohen said. "It's the same horse under a different rider."
"Exactly," Bissell said. "We have a right to compel Mister Merrion to commit himself to a story before we seek any indictments, to lock him into it before trial. We may never call him at trial, but we have a right to find out what he'll say if we do, and to prevent him from colluding with a clever lawyer to fabricate a different story to counter our case-in-chief. Reasonable doubts are counterfeited by such fabrications, to mislead credulous jurors. We want to find out what he'll say, before he finds out what we can prove.
"We know he wont do that voluntarily," Bissell said. "That's why we've given him immunity. As Mister Cohen demanded, it's Transactional, not Use. We've told him, through his lawyer, he is not a target. We've told him that nothing that he says will be used in evidence against him, unless he lies to us if he does, of course, we'll go after him for perjury. Hammer and tongs, to use a Hilliard phrase. We've filed the document declaring all of this with you."
The judge gazed at Bissell for a long minute. He gazed back without shifting his eyes. "My," she said, 'that's very ingenious, I must say.
You propose to bootstrap all of that stuff forward within the statute and nail Hilliard good, to punish guys who are dead1. Kill him because they got away? And make his best friend help with the execution? Is that all you have for us today?"
"It is, your Honor," Bissell said. "Frankly, I'm surprised we needed anything that this hearing, if that's what it is, was even held. In my experience the judge doesn't even get involved unless and until the immunized witness refuses to testify. Mister Merrion's not scheduled to come before the grand jury 'til next week. Who knows what he'll do then? He may not know, yet, himself."
"Yes," she said. "Well, I was also somewhat surprised Geoffd asked to_be heard. But then I said: "Geoff wants a hearing, and he's a good guy, so what the hey, give him a hearing." So Geoff, we're all listening."
"Your Honor," Cohen said, "I appreciate the court's kindness. I'll be brief. Congress enacted testimonial immunity to deal with frustrations encountered in prosecuting the Mob. It takes the Fifth Amendment out of play, to prevent underlings from shielding kingpins by claiming, correctly, that if they testify what the godfathers told them to do, they'll hang themselves at the same time, for doing it.
"Congress never meant to enable a prosecutor to do what this one wants to do: transform a man against his will into Judas Iscariot in order to conjure up charges against his friend. Mister Bissell by his own account has abundant evidence of what he calls tax evasion. More than enough to drag Dan Hilliard into court and see if he can persuade a jury to railroad the guy. He doesn't need to involve Ambrose Merrion, the man's very best friend, in this little manhunt of his. This's overkill, and plain meanness, nothing more."
"Geoff," the judge said, "I know how you feel. I know how your client feels, too: that he and Dan Hilliard did nothing wrong; all they did was become politicians and play what some believe is the headiest game in the world. They may be right. Never played the game, myself, but I've watched a lot of it; sure looked like fun to these eyes.
"But fun's irrelevant here. The law gives the US Attorney the power to grant immunity in any case he thinks appropriate. It gives the judge no discretion. If the US Attorney grants immunity, and the witness doesn't talk, I have to order the witness to talk, and if he wont, put him in jail.
"Them's the rules. If I thought that by letting you talk for another hour you'd come up with something to change that, I'd sit here and I'd let you do it. I'm sorry, but I don't.
"So: Mister Merrion, hear what I say to you. If, as and when you appear before the grand jury and are formally advised on the record of the grant of immunity; and asked questions; and you then refuse to answer, for any reason at all or no reason at all, the US Attorney will direct the US marshals to bring you before me. I will then inform you that you have valid privilege to remain silent, and order you to answer.
"You will be taken back before the grand jury, and if you do not answer then, we will meet for a third time. I will then find that by reason of your refusal to testify, you have placed yourself in contempt of this court. I will order the marshals to take you into custody and hold you to some convenient place of confinement until such time as you decide to obey my order to testify.
"Thus endeth the lesson; a hard saying to be sure, but as I told you, those're the rules we have here. Mister Cohen, do you or your client have any questions?"
Cohen sighed. "No, your Honor."
"Mister Merrion," the judge said, 'did your excellent counsel leave anything out that you would like to say now? Within the bounds of civility, of course don't want to take too many chances here."
Merrion had the thousand-yard stare of a man who'd stopped caring what he saw. He spoke off-handedly. "No," he said. "Just, I guess, that I'll see you next week. All of my life I've done what I can to protect people's dignity." Looking at Bissell: "I'm not going to give mine to him."
The judge pursed her lips. She looked at Bissell, already rising from his chair. "Nothing more from you, Mister Bissell, I take it?"
Bissell shook his head, smiling a parsimonious smile. "Not today, your Honor," he said. "Next week, I guess, unless Mister Merrion changes his mind, I'll have something more to bring before you. But no further business today."
The judge nodded. "Very well, then, we're adjourned. Liz, you are through for the day."
Bissell followed Robey to and through the doorway leading into the judge's office, Elizabeth Gibson with her machine three steps behind;
Merrion and Cohen were halfway there when the judge, still in her chair, halted all of them by saying: "Oh, Geoff, before you go, just one other thing I thought of here." Then as they all froze in mid-stride, she said: "No, no, all the rest of you can go. This's another matter that I need to talk about with Geoff. Nothing to do with the rest of you. This's about the real headiest game: I want to talk to him about basketball."
Cohen started back toward the table; the others resumed their departures. She gestured toward the door and nodded at him. He stepped over silently and shut it, returning to the table. He sat down again, looking quizzical.
"If this's about the Sanderson drug case," he said. She shook her head inquiringly. "Julian Sanderson? Cocaine? You drew it this week, I think."
She shrugged. "I think Sandy might've mentioned something about you diversifying into drugs," she said.
"Yeah," he said, 'well, I am, a little, but not with that case. I tried to make it clear to that new clerk in the magistrate session who doesn't seem awesomely bright, by the way -I was just there for arraignment. Coincidentally, he's the golf pro Bissell mentioned, has to moonlight tending bar but makes thousand-dollar campaign donations?
Haskell Sanderson's son. I cut the deal for the two smart-ass kids from Cannonball's who make the case against him. I think I might have a conflict of Ill interest representing the Sanderson kid. Too bad; nice fee in that case."
"Well, that wasn't what I had on my mind," the judge said. "Isn't that Bissell a stinker, though? Gracious, what a son of a bitch. I hated to do what I did."
"Yeah, Barrie, I know," Cohen said. "But I couldn't blame you. You had no choice in the matter." He chuckled. "When you asked me what I had to say, I had the feeling there was one person in the room who was hoping even more'n my client and I were that I'd be struck with some blinding flash of genius that'd vaporize Brother Bissell, and that was you."
She laughed. "Not far wrong," she said. "But look, I don't want to have to do next week what it looks like I'm going to have to, if things remain as they are. Put your man in jail."
"Ahhh," Cohen said, "I doubt it'll come to that. I'm going to call Bob Pooler, I get back to my office, tell him what a box that prick Bissell's put us in. See if he'll try to persuade Danny Hilliard to get ahold of Amby and convince him to talk. Pound it into his loyal old head there's no use both of them going to jail, and no way Amby can keep him out. And then do everything I can to make sure Bissell puts Amby on the stand at trial, so the best old friend an embattled politician ever had can lead that jury straight down the road to a sympathy-Not-Guilty, stick Bissell's case up his ass."
"I think he could pull it off," the judge said. "Let a jury watch Bissell strut around the courtroom for a week, they may acquit on the stairs. But I need more than your doubt that what I'm afraid of next week wont happen. I'm going to let Sandy know I'd better not draw Dan Hilliard's case. I'm not going to tell him the actual reason, but he'll know I'm depending on him to make sure it doesn't happen."
"Well," Cohen said, 'you could always recuse yourself."
"If I did," the judge said, "I'd have to give a reason; we aren't supposed to duck cases. And it couldn't be that once you were my lawyer. You've already heard what Bissell said: the government doesn't mind that. That leaves me with only one reason, which I do not care to state publicly."
"Oh yeah," Cohen said. "I forgot."
"I don't want to be on "Oprah"," the judge said. "I never told Eric about my fling with Danny. Don't know why, I just never did. I've never known whether you didn't know about Danny and me when you were representing Danny's wife, long before I hired you, or did but kept it quiet because you and Sam Evans're gentlemen. Did Sam protect me on that?"
"I thought you said what you wanted to talk to me about wasn't the matter you just heard," Cohen said, amused.
"I said I wanted to talk to you about basketball," she said, 'and that was the truth. This is a story about basketball, and I want you to listen carefully, so you'll be able to repeat it to your client before he meets the grand jury.
"This was some years ago now, when Eric and I'd decided we were going to get married, and I took him home to Fairmont, to meet my mom and dad. That's the fancy colony where they lived then, mostly top Ford honchos, outside of Detroit. This was before he retired and they moved to Santa Fe. Then he was still working for the Pistons. It was Christmas-time, and my dad and Eric and I were sitting around in the TV room after dinner and there was a game on, Lakers and Celtics. Bird and Magic; Magic and Bird: world was much younger then.
"Eric, being your normal artist, didn't know much about sports. Isn't really interested in any sport he isn't good at. He'll play basketball with me any old time I want, shoot a few hoops in the driveway which I find I do about every four or five years now, but used to three times a week. He was humoring me; I knew that and I was grateful. Anyway, he's not keen on watching things he doesn't do, reads or leaves the room, but that night he was on his best behavior, and the game was on.
It was a good one, and I forget what it was but someone did something that made Dad say: "Look at that." I don't remember which player did it or what color he was, but it was impressive we'll say it was Kevin McHale. And my father said you know my father's white, don't you? I know I told you that, you were getting me divorced."
"Maybe," Cohen said. "That was also a long time ago. But if you did I wouldn't've seen it had any bearing on the case, so it wouldn't've stuck."
"Well, I thought it did," she said, 'and that was because Ray thought it did. He never believed I was leaving him because he was kissing Whitey's ass all the time and I couldn't stand it any longer. He said I was the one who groveled for white folks, and that was why I was leaving him for Eric: "because Eric is white." If he'd known about Danny he would've said "Danny." Raymond said I was attracted to white men because my father's white, and subconsciously I've been trying to get in bed with him all along. Raymond took his college psych courses much too seriously."
"Oh yeah," Cohen said, 'now I remember. That was the time you socked him."
"Well, it was more like a slap," she said.
"Made his nose bleed," Cohen said. "Cost you, I figure, five or ten thousand dollars, off the top of the property settlement. Have that little item come out in court, that a Butler, Corey partner whacked her poor defenseless husband on the snoot? Warren Corey would've been simply ecstatic."
"It was worth it," she said. "Anyway, Ray really needed the dough more'n I did. He lost his shirt on that silly racetrack. The others got fleeced too, but they could afford it. Ray was in over his head."
"The basketball game," Cohen said, prompting. "Come on, I've got a hot desk to slave over up in South Hadley today."
"Right," she said. "Whoever it was and whatever he did, I know it was one of the forwards, made some move and Daddy said: "Now, look at that.
That's something I never could do. I just didn't have it in me." And then he started in on how people were always feeling sorry for him, he played before the big money, and he said: "Hell no, I was lucky I played when I did. If I were the right age now to be playing ball, I wouldn't be playing at all. I wouldn't be good enough.
'"When I came into the league, black men weren't allowed to: segregation. It wasn't right that I could play, but that was the way it was, and I wasn't the one who'd made it that way. Bird can play today, and so can McHale, and both of those guys're white, but like all of the white guys playing today, they are truly exceptional players.
"Exceptional' 's not what I ever was. "Pretty good' is what I was.
'"When I retired, I wasn't all washed up. I still had a year or so left. But I saw those kids coming along, wonderfully smooth, fluid players, and I knew what I wanted to do. I didn't want to play ball against those guys; I wanted to watch them play ball, help the team adapt to the times. I'd played in the time that I had to play in, and when it was over, I stopped."
Judge Foote smiled at Cohen, gnawing on her lower lip, making her eyes twinkle, too. "Think you can remember that, long enough to tell it to your client?"
"I think so," Cohen said, smiling back.
"Because I really don't want to have to put your man in jail, Geoff," she said. "I don't want to give Mister Bissell the satisfaction, but mostly I just don't want to put Ambrose Merrion in jail for Thanksgiving. It isn't the right thing to do. He's in the same position that my father was, and he has to see it. The game that he and Danny played has changed. It's time for him to stop playing.
"He wont like it. He'll resist. But he looks to me as though he's smart enough to see that, if you push him. They've changed the rules on him; the old code's been repealed. Let the new nasty boys carve their moral arrogance into someone else's tough old hide. I like your idea a lot. Pump him up to testify and help Bissell get himself way out on the limb of his indictment. Then at trial ram it right up his ass. Make him see he can go out with a bang."
"And that isn't fighting?" Cohen said, standing up.
Judge Foote stood up. She extended her hand. "Well, maybe a little," she said, 'fighting in a different way."
Cohen shook her hand. "Very good," he said, 'and I'll tell you something too. Sam Evans did not know about your frolics with Danny.
He said he'd forbidden Danny to come clean with him, give him a list of his girlfriends. He said to me: "He understands that's information I don't want to have, and you're not getting it either, no matter what we have to do."
For a moment the judge said nothing. Then she said: "So there're at least four of you left; that's good to hear. Sam is a real gentleman."