At End of Day

by George V. Higgins

  “It should’ve worked. Everything this druggist sees, and the other druggists see, says this guy is okay. You had some experience with people on painkillers, this’s about where you’d expect a guy to be who’s got what he’s says he’s got, still getting around. He’s documented. Complete ID as Chamberlain, driver’s license from New Jersey, address there in Ewing Township, just outside of Trenton, credit cards—whole schmear. Same for the other three guys he says he is.

  “All fake. No such person, no such address; the accounts exist but not under that name. But very good fake. To begin with, not only does the scrip look all right, he looks all right—meaning he looks very sick. To any pharmacist, assistant, used to dealing with sick people, his appearance’s normal—meaning, he looks awful.

  “He should’ve sailed through. Why doesn’t this Mister Chamberlain’s?

  “Simple—bad luck.”

  “Criminals also have bad days,” Dowd said. He chuckled. “Funny, but they never think of that possibility. Almost never occurs to a street thug that the next well-dressed chap he picks to mug may not only have a fancy watch but also a nasty disposition and a thirty-eight. Or to the stickup artist that the guy in the line beside him at the bank may not only be a regular customer but an armed off-duty cop.”

  Ferrigno laughed. “Exactly,” he said. “It so happens that this druggist’d filled four prescriptions for that stuff in the previous thirty-six hours. Exhausted his supply. He’d already called the distributor and ordered up another batch, but it’s going to be a couple hours, before it comes in. So he has his assistant ask Mister Chamberlain to come back, four-fifteen, four-thirty. Chamberlain says fine, he’ll do that. But there’s a lull around three. Our pharmacist’s maybe bored. He thinks, ‘What the hell’—he’s had quite a demand for this stuff; it is a controlled substance; they’re always getting the nagging newsletters. ‘There’s an illegal market out there; people’re always dreamin’ up new scams to get it’; he’s got the time—so why not? He makes the call.”

  The traffic lights showed red at the three-way intersection of Blue Hill Avenue, Cummins Highway and River Street several cars ahead of them. Ferrigno stopped the Impala in the left lane eight cars up, next to a black BMW 740IL with chrome eyebrows on the wheelwells double-parked second from the rear in a line of four cars in front of a Bank of Boston branch with a long line at its sidewalk ATM. The freshly coiffed black woman behind the wheel of the BMW regarded Dowd politely, mouthed “Officer” and smiled. Dowd nodded and smiled back.

  “Once he does that, it’s all over. Investigator with a good database takes about eight minutes to find out it’s a fake. Okay. Chamberlain comes back at four-fifteen; serious trouble is waiting. Jameson. He has the pharmacist and his assistant identify our friend as the guy who brought in the fake prescription. Tells him he’s under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic in narcotics, and that’s just for openers. Puts the cuffs on him.”

  The light changed and Ferrigno took the Impala onto the divided boulevard where Blue Hill Avenue becomes Blue Hills Parkway in Milton. The traffic separated into four streams. A few cars took the right onto the Truman Highway. Most continued on to Route 138 southbound, the signage designating it for Canton and Route 128. Some took the left on Route 28 heading east toward East Milton center. Ferrigno took the Impala out of the pack alone straight ahead. Over the rounded hills to the south the darkness was complete.

  “Bobby tells him he’s going to take him down to the Mansfield police station and put him in a cell there ’til he can get in touch with us. Tell us that he’s got him, so that we can then talk to someone from the DA’s office. Find out where the DA wants him taken, how any times it’s okay to hit him with a rubber hose. But he should not plan on getting home today in time to catch the end of ‘Oprah.’ And it is at this point that our silver-tongued con man comes unglued.”

  “I love it,” Dowd said with satisfaction, “the gifted amateur. First-time criminal genius. Everything’s going so good, ‘all the cops’re such jerks, no idea what’s going on,’ and then suddenly it comes to a screeching halt. He discovers that as sleepy as he thought we were, his brilliant little caper did get our attention, and we’ve got him by the balls.”

  “Lou Sargent,” Ferrigno said, taking the Impala out of the streetlighted neighborhood into the deep darkness of the Blue Hills Reservation on Unquity Road, “is fifty-eight years old.” Now Dowd could see a few scattered stars over the black hillsides. “Nine years ago, his life came apart. ‘Until then I was never in trouble. ’til then I was doing okay.’

  “ ‘That’s what they all say,’ Jameson says. He tells me, ‘It’s like I hauled off and belted him. I thought he’s gonna cry. He tells me “No, I really was.” And from what he told me I guess I would’ve thought that, too. He’s forty-nine. He’s divorced from his first wife but that was fourteen years ago, and after that they got along fine. “Sometimes I kind of wondered why we got divorced.” Finished raising the four kids they’d had together. “They tell you to always worry about that, what you’ve done to the kids, but they seem to’ve turned out fine, too—least so far.”

  “ ‘He’s now with his second wife, married her four years before—this’s still nine years ago now, he isn’t fifty yet—and the wheels start to fall off. One day he goes to work, “very nice day. Sunny. I remember. World looked pretty good.”

  “ ‘I can see why it would,’ Jameson tells me. ‘He’s been with this outfit years, Acadia-Johnson, Industrial Underwriters, Taunton Industrial Park. What they do’s reinsure companies for unfamiliar projects, jobs that’re bigger or just very different than they’re used to bidding, risks that might not be covered by their regular insurance.

  “ ‘Like if a major road-construction company gets a contract to rebuild a shipyard. Now they’re dealing with the ocean. Not just blizzards—tides, and currents. Whadda they know about this? “Better go get some more bonding insurance—we fuck up, we don’t hafta pay.”

  “ ‘The way he tells it, this’s not a crowded field. Only two or three companies this side of the Mississippi do what they do—and only three or four the other side. Apparently peculiar geographical and population conditions have so much to do with determining risk that there’re practical limits to how much territory any one outfit can know well enough to cover.

  “ ‘He’s one of his company’s top risk analysts, knows his job and does it well—and since that happens to be the kind of people that the company can’t do its job without, function in the field it serves, he feels pretty secure. But this particular morning he finds out he isn’t. They tell him when he gets in that he can turn around, go home. Company’s been sold to its major competitor. All it’s going to be’s a name now, a division. In other words, a shell, and he no longer has a job. And because the field’s so small to begin with, obviously the reason the competitor did this, bought the one he worked for, was to eliminate it, and then economize on overhead. Make high-priced people like him redundant, and get rid of them—their salaries, benefits and pensions.

  “ ‘Naturally, he’s devastated. Almost fifty and here he’s going to have to try to find another job, where he can use skills that he developed for the very specialized job that now no longer exists. Where does he begin? He doesn’t know.

  “ ‘He has to get focused. He’ll deal with the practical side of things, like nailing down his COBRA rights, the continuation of benefits law that protects people thrown out of work from losing their life- and health-insurance coverage. And a friend who went through something similar when his firm bit the dust tells him that given his age and situation—looking for another job—he should take advantage of this great health plan he’s only going to have for another six months, go in and get himself a thorough work-up. So then when he’s out actively looking for a job, he’ll be able to say, “Look, not only am I unbelievably highly qualified and so forth, but I just had a complete checkup. My health is perfect.”

  “ ‘Because hiring people’re not supposed
to take health into the question. There’s a federal law against it, Americans with Disabilities Act. But they do do it; they’re just very cagey. They don’t say it. They say only, “What’s this guy done?” They mean, “How old is he?” And if he’s over thirty, “How’s his health been? Not interested in hiring somebody’s going to come in here, set new records for sick days.”

  “So, Jameson says,” Ferrigno said, the Impala ascending the rise at the Hillside Street intersection, “he takes the advice.” Ferrigno turned west. “ ‘He goes to the doctor, and the doctor gets that look on his face nobody wants to see. Asks him if he’s lost any weight recently. And Sargent says he has—he was actually kind of glad, first noticed it was happening. Been meaning to drop a few pounds; he’d been getting kind of heavy. And the doctor says how many, and what did he do to lose them; anything special, like cut out the sweets, or the beer. And Sargent says no, nothing actually; hadn’t given up anything—that was what made it so nice, to have those fifteen or sixteen pounds just melt away. And the doctor says how long ago was that, and Sargent says he isn’t really sure, six-eight months ago, and the doctor looks like he smells cat piss and tells him he wants him in the hospital, “not next week; tomorrow,” and have a bunch of tests. Which he does, and they find out what caused the weight loss. Not a nice surprise at all. And now it’s in his bones.’ ”

  Ferrigno with the Paddock Stables on the left and the base of Great Blue Hill on the right reached over with his right hand and turned on the radio. A male voice came on saying, “RKO Talk Radio, six-eighty on your dial, and this is Howie Carr. Stay with us now as we——”

  “I’ll do it,” Dowd said, leaning over. “Ninety-eight-point-eight, you said?”

  “Right, FM,” Ferrigno said, both hands back on the wheel now as they passed the parking lot at Houghton’s Pond and the lights from the restaurants and filling stations clustered near the Route 138 cloverleaf with Route 128 washed out the stars. “Ninety-eight-point-eight, FM. You’ll probably have trouble. There’s at least three other stations fairly close to it. Sometimes atmospherics sort of billiard them around. But I promise you, it’s there. As the guy said to his bride, ‘Yeah, I know it’s little, dear, but think of it as your lollipop—there’ll be hope for both of us.’ ”

  Dowd chuckled. A woman’s high and breathy voice said, “So, do you have any idea what that could possibly’ve been that was making all that noise? And what we could do about it? To get rid of it, I mean?”

  A different kind of voice that sounded as though it might have been produced by another radio inside the car radio began by making a metallic panting noise, then segued into words uttered in something resembling the sound of a normal male voice. “As a matter of fact, I think I do,” it said.

  “You got it,” Ferrigno said. “That’s him.” Dowd sat back.

  “In fact,” the synthetic voice said, “I think I know exactly what it is you hear sometimes in your pear tree at night. As though there’s something fighting in it. There is.”

  “Nooo,” she said, mild indignation mixed with disbelief. “Fighting in it? Birds don’t fight.”

  “Oh, yes, they do,” the artificial voice said. “Jays bully other birds all the time. Crows steal the eggs from other birds’ nests, and the other birds don’t like it. When the crows attack, the other birds make lots of noise—if you really listen you can hear how frantic they are. To call their friends to come, gang up, and fight the crows.

  “But it’s pretty early for that. What I think you’ve got’s raccoons. Big bushy fat raccoons with burglar’s masks and paws with claws that look like fingers—and they use them like that, too.”

  “Nooo,” the woman said.

  “Oh, yes,” the metallic voice said. “And of course you also have the birds. And the noise that you describe to me, sounds almost like a woman sobbing, ’cryin’ mad,’ you said? Do it again for us, will you?”

  “If I can,” the woman said dubiously. “Ah, huh-oo, huh-oo, huh-oo? Like that.”

  Dowd and Ferrigno laughed.

  “Very good,” Sexton said. “My guess in that case, they sound like that, would be that these’re definitely owls.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” the woman said. “Because we’ve never seen any, and we’ve lived here a long time now, seventeen years. And both my husband and I garden. Got this just huge compost heap—it’s gorgeous. So we’re both outdoors a lot. He grows his vegetables behind the garage, lettuce and tomatoes, and zucchini squash, of course—have to grow zucchinis. And the eggplants, which we both love. Some herbs we have in salads. Flowers, as the kiddos say, ‘are my bag.’ I do just love my flowers. Already had the crocuses and daffodils. Glads and then the day lilies. I just——”

  “Yes,” the mechanical voice said, “but we’re talking the birds and raccoons here, and we do want to move along. Coming up on seven here. Owls’re nocturnal. You’re diurnal in your garden, out there in the dayime. Owls’re out at night. In this case, probably little screech owls, probably rufous—meaning red, that’s all, fancy birders’ term.

  “And the reason that they’re fighting with the raccoons? Well, my guess is, well, raccoons’re very territorial, all right? Don’t know if you realize that, but let me assure you, they are. Stake out their territories and they make themselves a nest, a home there and that’s where they’ll spend all their adult lives, all right? If we let them. If they can get themselves enough to eat, which with all the people livin’ all around them now, the suburbs expandin’ like you’ve had all around here since right after World War Two, out into what used to be the forests and so forth, well, all the food we throw away, they don’t have much trouble. They’re just very good adapters, like to eat our garbage, and so, if they can get whatever the raccoon version of cable is, no one bothers them? They’ll stay there ’til they die.

  “But now this time of year, it being spring and all, the young raccoons born last year’re now out lookin’ for new homes. Their loving parents’ve kicked them out. We do it in September, send ours off to college, say to them, ‘Go on now, git, gonna turn your bedroom into an entertainment center, monster TV, everything. Be sure and write us now and then, not just when you want money, tell us how it’s goin’.’ ”

  The woman snickered and Sexton laughed again, making the metallic panting sound like an engine under load, short on oil and laboring. “But raccoons do it in the springtime, you dig? Kick the young ’uns out, and what those young ones now’re doin’ ’s checkin’ out new pads.

  “And what they like especially’s a good old hollow tree. Which I will bet that pear in your yard’s got at least one part trunk that’s dead, gone hollow, and what you’ve been hearing is a disagreement between a young raccoon who’s looked it over, likes it and decided he’ll take it, start a family there—or maybe it’s a she-raccoon, I dunno which raccoon gender does the homesteading—’cept there’s this one catch; it’s already occupied. And that’s what makes the hoots and flapping. The owls already live there. They’re saying, ‘Not so darned fast here.’ They aren’t gonna be evicted—standing up for their rights as the rightful residents.”

  “Well, what do I do, then?” the woman’s voice said.

  “Ma’am,” the mechanical voice said, “I don’t think there’s much you can do. Odds favor the raccoon. That raccoon is going to win. And if you should get rid of him, have him trapped and relocated—cost you at least fifty, sixty bucks, maybe more, have somebody come in and do it—or perhaps have someone shoot him, you’re not a gun-control freak and don’t mind a little violence, then pretty soon some night after that when you’re in your yard, you’ll hear another war beginning. Your tree’s a choice dwelling place, and if you don’t have one raccoon, well then, you’ll have another. Only thing that you can do, if you don’t want raccoons, I think, is have that tree cut down.”

  “I——” she said.

  “And only thing that I can do right now for anybody listenin’ is say, ‘So long for now, folks, here around Tim’s Cracker Barr
el.’ ” The piano refrain of “The Entertainer” began in the background. “But leave your radio tuned here with us now, if you will, please. Music for the Dinner Hour, coming right up, featuring tonight the Boston Pops. And then later on at eight, your favorite Nashville Sounds. This’s Tim, at CTN, your friendly neighbor here in Canton—do call in again real soon, tomorrow if you can, just love to hear from you, and we’ll do it all again.” The ragtime piano music came up louder and became the foreground sound.

  Dowd reached over and shut off the radio. “Shit,” he said, sitting back. “I hate it when they do that.”

  “Who?” Ferrigno said. “Do what?” The light changed to green at the brightly lighted intersection ahead of them as they passed the A-frame church set back from the road on the left, and he turned south onto Route 138.

  “This Sexton guy,” Dowd said. “He doesn’t know it but he just went and humanized himself. Just like you and me. Cheerful enough guy, got that Darth Vader echo voice you get with a cheap speaker phone, but still, cheerful enough. Probably about twenty-eight percent bullshit, ’bout the same’s the rest of us. If either one of us knew anything at all about screech owls and raccoons, hollow trees, we’d probably be bustin’ our guts laughing now, all the shit he’s just handed that poor woman about what’s goin’ on in her backyard pear tree. Surprised he didn’t tell her she’s got a partridge in it; her true love sent it to her, Christmas’s early this year. And she swallowed it, like honey on toast. But she doesn’t know shit about owls, or any other critters he says’re involved there—any more than we do, or anybody else does, got a job to do and kids to raise and a wife or a husband at home to keep happy; doesn’t have time to study raccoons, read up on what lives in pear trees.