At End of Day

by George V. Higgins

  “And along with one other thing, he knows this—that’s his secret. Same as every other con man, scam artist, politician, ballplayer—you go ahead and name it, any occupation. If you seem confident; if you can make it sound like you know what you’re talkin’ about—and it’s not something everyone has to know, just to get along in this world—you can tell people almost anything. Most of them’ll believe you.”

  “What’s the ‘one other thing’?” Ferrigno said, the Impala crossing over Route 128, the traffic thinning out on the interstate below.

  “He knows how to make it sound plausible,” Dowd said. “Even though he knows it’s probably bullshit—in this case with the owls, a wild guess, it might be true—he doesn’t laugh while he’s slingin’ it. You have to keep a straight face—that’s mandatory.”

  “So why’s this bother you?” Ferrigno said. Route 128 was well behind them now; the Impala was descending into the hollow at Cobb’s Corner.

  “It bothers me because the good arrest is a work of art. You do it right and you can change a two-bit crook into a major law-enforcement asset, in the twinkling of an eye.”

  “Riiight,” Ferrigno said.

  “So I exaggerate,” Dowd said. “But hear me out. You need to go into the arrest in the right frame of mind. The point of view you as a cop want to have when you go to grab a guy is controlled but righteous anger. You’re a policeman. Guardian of the law. A professional law-enforcement person, employed by society at disgracefully low wages to exert the authority to discourage individuals from flouting the rules. Making it possible for all of us to live together in peace, harmony—and, if possible, prosperity.

  “Now, being realistic, you can’t expect every criminal you grab is going to be the Boston Strangler. Or the guy OJ’s looking for, mostly on the golf course—the guy who really killed Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. A murdering genius that hanging’s too good for, go in hoping he’ll resist, so you can shoot him. Several times. But depending on what he’s done, the very least the suspect should be’s a pain in the ass. One cut below a damn nuisance.”

  He brooded. “Every self-respecting criminal has a moral obligation to present himself at all times as at least a miserable prick. So a cop can get some pleasure outta roustin’ his miserable ass. Time enough after he’s been arrested and his lawyer’s talked to him, start look hangdog and fakin’ remorse. Practicing the rehabilitated look. This dodge of acting like a basically nice guy before you’re arrested; this’s unfair to police.”

  “Sexton isn’t meeting his responsibilities,” Ferrigno said.

  “He’s scorning them,” Dowd said. “On the score of that performance. The effect it had on me.”

  The light was green at Cobb’s Corner and Ferrigno going through it let up on the accelerator, allowing the steep grade where Route 138 as Washington Street becomes the Turnpike to slow its progress beyond the front lawn of the Ponkapoag Golf Club. Near the crest of the hill he signaled a right turn and took the Impala into the development on Peaceful Hills Drive. “Well, maybe you could get yourself worked up about that,” Ferrigno said. “Get yourself psyched on the scorn—so you can be happy to arrest him.”

  Two low-slung eight-room ranch houses facing Turnpike flanked the entrance to Peaceful Hills, illuminated by the streetlights on the main road and two more close together near the front of the development. The house on the left was cocoa-brown with a grey roof and bright turquoise trim; the drapes in the front picture window were open on a table lamp with a cocoa-brown shade. The shrubbery along the foundation had overgrown the window sills. There was a white Plymouth Voyager minivan in the driveway; a two-wheeled trailer with two shrouded Sno-Cats was parked next to it under the only tree on the shallow lot, a budding maple.

  “If we were still a ways away,” Dowd said, “then, maybe. But not now—we’re here. Won’t have time enough to come at it from that angle. Oh, I’ll arrest him anyway. After all, it is my job. But unless he acts up some, gives us at least a little guff, I won’t get any enjoyment out of it.”

  15

  THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET was dusty rose with a grey roof and white trim. The garage doors were down. There were ten birdhouses, five red and five white, with silver stars on blue roofs, in the maple tree next to the garage; the low shrubs along the front of the house were bagged in burlap. The drapes were drawn in the front picture window so that only a sliver of light showed at the center. The streetlights on Turnpike were very bright sodium arcs; those in Peaceful Hills were incandescents spaced two or three hundred yards apart, so that the entire neighborhood appeared to be in hiding and only the picture window treatments—drapes closed or drapes open—distinguished the houses from one another in the dark.

  Ferrigno seemed to make the Impala sneak among them, taking the first left off Peaceful Hills onto Mockingbird Lane and at the end of it the left into Chickadee Circle without pausing to read street signs. There were three low-slung six-room ranch houses on each side of the approach to the circular turnaround and two more at the circle. There was a streetlight on the left at the edge of the circle. The house positioned in the quarter-to-the-hour quadrant was pale grey with a grey roof and maroon shutters. The one in the quarter-after quadrant was lima green with a grey roof and dark green trim.

  “The one onna right, pea-soup color,” Ferrigno said. The drapes were drawn partway in the front picture window. A lamp with a maroon shade and a base of a rearing grey stallion made of grey-silver plastic was centered in it on a table. The metallic blue Dodge Ram Maxivan in the driveway blocked the view from the street of the garage that Sexton had converted to his studio and office. There was a light on in the room behind the reception area, visible through the door next to the studio. The outside light was on, illuminating the brass 68 numerals over the big black mailbox, and the ramp leading up to the door. Ferrigno stopped the Impala behind the van, blocking it in the driveway. He shut off the ignition.

  Dowd chuckled. “Okay,” he said, “if he tries to make a break for it, he finds his wheels blocked, just like any other bad actor. But’re you sure you’re allowed to do this? Don’t you have to give handicapped suspects an escape route, take their disability into account?”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Ferrigno said. “In the Marathon the wheelchair guys always come barrel-assing down Heartbreak Hill into Brookline miles ahead of the runners. I’m givin’ him at least an even shot here. I figure, I have got his van blocked; if he decides to bolt, he’ll see this; and come wailin’ out the door and down that ramp like he was launched. That’ll give him a big lead; he’ll be halfway to the main road ’fore I get the key back in the ignition. I don’t care what anybody says—that’s a sporting chance, as much any felon, able-bodied or not, oughta get.”

  Dowd laughed and got out of the car. He opened the right rear door and lifted a black leather zippered three-ring portfolio off the back seat. He closed the door and turned toward the house. It was just after 7:10. He was first at the door with the portfolio in his left hand and his badge case ready in his right, Ferrigno slightly behind him on the ramp to his left, when Theresa Sexton—in grey suede boots with two-inch stacked heels that made her 5′11″, teased reddish-blond big hair that made her seem even taller, tight white jeans and a tight yellow deeply scoop-necked short-sleeved jersey over an extreme pushup bra—answered the doorbell. She had a pilsner glass in her left hand; her long fingernails were painted gold. She took a swallow of beer as she opened the inside door with her right hand, smiling invitingly, merry, her eyes sparkling and wide, the brows lifted, her lips parted in “Yes?”

  Dowd held up the badge and she frowned, half opening her mouth, freshly lipsticked dark pink, as she stared at it through the glass of the storm door. Blinking, she began to shake her head, either to indicate confusion and try to clear it, or to indicate No, when Dowd, having stowed the badge case in his left inside jacket pocket, opened the storm door with his right hand and stepped up onto the threshold, moving her back and explai
ning, “State Police, Mrs. Sexton. We’d like to come in.”

  She retreated, stepping backward toward the front of her desk in the reception area, somewhat off balance, using her right hand to grope behind her for the front of the desk. The speakers played a Boston Pops recording of “Moonlight Serenade,” lush with trombones, saxophones and muted trumpets, from a medley of Glenn Miller Band favorites. “I don’t …” she said.

  “We need to talk to your husband, Mrs. Sexton,” Dowd said, moving forward relentlessly, crowding her back toward the desk, slapping the portfolio down on it, making room enough for Ferrigno to enter behind him, look through the window into the studio and satisfy himself that it was unoccupied, then push past Theresa and the desk, going directly to the right of the doorway leading to what had been the breezeway before the garage conversion and was now the entryway to the kitchen, drawing his dark grey Glock 9mm service pistol from the holster where it rode butt canted forward at the top of his right hip.

  Dowd continued to close in on her, his voice gentle and soothing but also as insistent as his forward motion. “Since his truck’s there in the drive, probably doesn’t go too far without it, we assume he must be home. Out there in the kitchen, is he?” Calculating that she would not want or try to flee, he had her effectually cornered now between the front of the desk, the green molded plastic chair in front of it and the door. He stood close to her, filling her field of vision, so that to see clearly what Ferrigno was doing she would have had to turn her head to the right, taking her eyes off Dowd, making it so that she would fear doing it would make her seem furtive and guilt-conscious, and therefore wouldn’t do it.

  She leaned back as far away from him as she could, using her right hand now to steady herself against the desk, backing around; calves pressed against the green chair, she held the beer glass aloft in her left hand, nearly at eye level, trying not to spill it, the posture thrusting her breasts out and upward toward Dowd like offerings, her chin down against the top of her chest above them. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, making the breasts heave; her nostrils flared and her mouth was now completely open, her eyes very wide. “Could you call him for us, please? Tell him we’re here? And we need to talk to him? Ask him a few questions? We don’t want to alarm him. Startle him, you know?”

  She shook her head wildly, chewing now on her lower lip, and Ferrigno, moving diagonally from right to left, sprang lightly and almost soundlessly through the doorway, landing combat-crouched on the balls of his feet, facing to the right of the door, his forearms and two-handed grip on the Glock now in the kitchen area beyond the frame of the door. Theresa turned her head to the right just as Ferrigno’s coattails disappeared into the kitchen. “Tim,” she said, crying her husband’s name.

  Dowd put his left hand on her right forearm. “Now Mrs. Sexton,” he said reproachfully, “there’s nothing to be upset about here. We’re here simply because we need to talk to your husband. I’ve already told you we’re police. We’re with the Special Investigations Bureau of the Massachusetts State Police. Now this’s important.”

  In the kitchen Ferrigno called authoritatively, “Mister Sexton. State Police. Need to talk to you. I’ll come to you. Just stay where you are. Say something so I can tell where you are.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Jim Dowd,” Dowd said, stepping back half a pace from her, “and my partner’s Trooper Henry Ferrigno. We’re assigned to the detective division. We work in plain clothes. That’s why we’re not in uniform. And we’ve made an arrest today down in Mansfield, this afternoon, and as a result of that we have a man in custody whom another officer’s talked to, and as a result of what this man told this other officer, we now have to talk to your husband.” He locked her eyes with his. “I have to emphasize,” he said, “this’s all very important.

  “Are there any guns in the house?”

  She stared at Dowd, her eyes wild. “Nooo,” she said, “you can’t shoot him.”

  Dowd took her firmly by her right forearm and used his right hand to capture her left forearm so that he could bring down her left hand with the pilsner glass. That caused her to concentrate on not spilling the beer as he exerted gentle force on her arms, enough to maneuver her into sitting down on the green plastic chair. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Releasing her right forearm, he used his left hand to put her right hand in her lap and then to take the glass out of her left hand and put it in the center of the blotter on her desk. There was a chunk of lime at the bottom of the glass. He used his right hand to place her left hand in her lap. He stepped back again, this time a full pace, cocking his head and regarding her as a careful house painter might look for brush marks or drips on a panel just completed. Elsewhere in the house Ferrigno called out “Mister Sexton?” at intervals; they could hear him opening and closing doors.

  “Well, he’s not in a closet, you know,” she said with dull resentment, hearing the clacking sound Ferrigno made opening and closing a wooden folding door. She looked up into Dowd’s face, her eyes now flat and dull, her dark pink mouth pouched sullen. “He can’t get the chair into tight spaces.”

  “Well, you see, Mrs. Sexton,” Dowd said pleasantly, as though informing a child that ice cream would not be served ’til later, “we don’t know the layout of this house the way you and Mister Sexton do, which doors’re for closets. So we have to assume every door’s a door into a room—or a space big enough for your husband to get into some way and hide in, since he doesn’t seem to want to come out and talk to us.”

  “He’s not hiding,” she said, both grim and disdainful. “He’s not afraid of you. He doesn’t even know you’re here. He’s out inna back, inna screenhouse. Can’t hear you guys in here, hollerin’ at him.”

  “Kind of chilly still, for the screenhouse, isn’t it?” Dowd said, edging toward the kitchen entry.

  “ ’s where the grill is,” she said. “He’s got his jacket on. That’s where we keep the gas grill, all right? His father got the first screenhouse for summer, he could grill meat for his dinner ’thout the mosquitoes eatin’ him. Then he had the bright idea if he put in a cement floor inna thing out there, second winter after, then he’d be able, grill his meat year ’round. Can’t use a charcoal or a gas grill in your own house—suffocate. Inna fresh air inna screenhouse, you can.”

  Dowd studied her, his mouth working. “No kidding,” he said.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, not looking up, “I’m not kiddin’. His father did it so that inna winter when the ground got all wet, then even if it snowed or rained, he could go out there and charcoal-grill what they had for dinner. Golf’s only one reason he retired Arizona, and I don’t think it was the main one—out there he can grill year ’round, never need a jacket. Loves the taste of charcoaled meat. But tryin’ to keep smoke away here, he built the screenhouse too far from the house. I mean, he walked normal, everything, and he would try to hurry. But it’s too far, and he always had the same trouble Tim does inna wheelchair—even withah landing strip that he had put in. Had like a sidewalk paved out to there. Goes like a bat outta hell on it. Zoo-oom.” She made a planing, swooping motion with her hand. “When it snows he has a kid come shovel it. So he has a lot of fun, but it don’t change anything. Meat’s all cold after it’s ready, time he can get it back inside here onna the table. Hafta put it under the broiler innie oven. Heat it up.”

  At the entry Dowd glanced back at her to make sure she wasn’t moving. Seeing she was sitting head down with her shoulders slumped, dispirited, in the green plastic chair, he stuck his head into the passage and shouted: “Henry, can you read me? She says he’s out in the back. Got a screenhouse out there and he’s cookin’ meat in it.”

  “Filet mignon,” she said resentfully, looking up, as Ferrigno called back “Yo,” from some point farther in the house.

  Dowd looked back at her, pursing his lips, still shouting at Ferrigno. “I said—she says he’s out inna screenhouse. Inna yard inna back. Charcoalin’ meat. Take a look out, see ’f he’s there.” />
  “Aw right,” Ferrigno yelled. “Yeah, there’s a light out there.” Dowd heard a door open and bang shut.

  “ ’Grillin’ meat,’ I said,” she said, looking up, regaining spirit as Dowd watched. Now she was deciding that his interest should make her feel better. “His father—strictly charcoal.” She straightened up, moving her shoulders back and forth. “Timmy—strictly propane. Says ah charcoal lighter, all it is is kerosene, makes too much smoke; gets in his stoma there, an’ chokes him.” She reached across her chest with her right hand, using her thumb and forefinger to pluck at her left bra strap under the left sleeve of the yellow jersey, hiking it up and resettling it on her shoulder. Then she did the same thing with the right strap, using her left thumb and forefinger. She wiggled and bounced on the chair and inhaled. She moistened the dark pink lips with the tip of her tongue. “Plus gives the meat an oily taste. Can’t hack it.” She sat back in the chair now and nodded, satisfied that she was displaying herself properly.

  “I see,” Dowd said.

  “Uh huh,” she said. She regarded the pilsner glass on the desk thoughtfully. “Tonight, see, we’re celebrating.” On the speaker the Boston Pops segued into “In the Mood.” She sniffled. “Lou and Joie’re comin’ back up here again tonight. To help us celebrate.”

  “This would be Lou … Sargent?” Dowd said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “and his wife, Joie? Coming up here from South Dartmouth, soon as she gets out of work. Lou don’t have a job. Right now. I thought you’re them—they must’ve got here early. See, they were there with us, saw it—Rocky’s, down in Stoughton? Last Sunday afternoon.” She smiled. That’s why the filet mignons.” She paused expectantly, inviting a reply. Dowd kept his face expressionless and said nothing. “You know?” she said, helpfully.

  “Well,” Dowd said, “I was trying to think. What it’d be that you’d be celebrating. But I couldn’t. Not first day of spring—that was last month. Not income tax day—that was a week ago.”