“Income tax day?” she said. “Who in hell’d celebrate income tax day?”
“Well,” Dowd said, “never personally had the good luck to’ve been one myself, I wouldn’t know this from experience, but I would think that people finding out that they’re getting big refunds on their taxes, they might think that was a pretty good reason to celebrate.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, frowning, gnawing again on her lower lip. “I never thought of that.” She nodded. “I guess that could happen.” She glanced again at the pilsner glass; the foamy white head on the golden beer had subsided. She licked her lips. She said, “Say, uh,” nodding toward the beer, “ ’d it be all right if I was, you know, to drink some of that now? While you’re still here, I mean?”
Unable to stop himself, Dowd grinned at her. “Well now,” he said, “that’s an interesting question. Let’s consider it.
“This’s your house, right?” he said.
She nodded, bright-eyed now.
“And that there is your beer, right?” he said.
She nodded again. “Corona,” she said proudly.
“Which you’ve aleady had some of, right?” he said.
She blushed.
“In fact,” he said, “being something of a student of this sort of thing, having had a few beers myself, I would guess that maybe this one might be your … second?” She shook her head a little. “No?” he said. “Then this would be your … third … tonight?”
She nodded happily.
“But you’re over twenty-one,” he said, “so you are legal.” She nodded. “And you’re not driving, I can see.” She shook her head. “And you’re not disturbing anybody,” he said. She shook her head emphatically, grinning at their game. “Certainly not … the peace,” he said. He winked. She lifted her eyebrows and beamed. “We do know that, at least,” he said. She put her head back and giggled.
Dowd nodded, smiling. “Then I think it’s okay,” he said. “Go ahead and have some beer.”
She was reaching across her body with her left hand for the glass when the door somewhere in the house behind them opened and then banged shut again. She remembered Ferrigno had also come in, and gone out, and the fun vanished from her face. She frowned and started to get up.
“Back in with him, Loot,” Ferrigno yelled. “Out here in the dinette.” There were squeaking, banging and thrashing sounds. “No,” Ferrigno said. “You’re not goin’ in there. They’ll be comin’ right out here. Don’t give me no fuckin’ shit now—I’ll take your fuckin’ mignons and put ’em downah damn disposal. You just get over there behind that table, and you lock those fuckin’ wheels, and you stay fuckin’ put.”
Theresa, making a soft cry that was not a word, came out of the chair, putting out her hands to fend off Dowd, but he stood aside to his left and turned his back to the kitchen entry, extending his right arm like a crossing gate, so that she ran into it and stopped. “Slow down now,” he said, keeping his voice soothing. “Take it easy. Let’s try to keep in mind here what your situation is. Your husband’s in the kitchen and he’s in police custody.”
She stared at Dowd, her eyes wild. “Under arrest, ma’am, yes, he is,” Dowd said, taking her by the forearms again as she raised her hands, now fists, to beat his chest. “Charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute narcotics, one charge out of many that we could bring. Have to choose from, you might say.” She tried to wrench out of his grip and could not. “But for the moment he’s right here and you are going to see him, as I assume you had in mind here when you raised your fists at me.”
She exhaled heavily, and disgustedly. “I’m a state police officer, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a cop, I guess I have to remind you. We’ve maybe been having a little too much harmless fun out here, you and me, than I should’ve been allowing, but don’t let it mislead you. We ain’t pals, you and me, and it’s still a criminal offense to try to hit me.” She looked calculating. “Or try to kick me, or knee me—anywhere, in any part of my body. You got that? You do that, and forget about flirtin’, I’ll hurt you. You’re thinkin’ ’bout doing somethin’ like that, don’t. Understand?” She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Now, if you tell me you can behave yourself now, we’ll go out and see your husband. Or if you don’t I’ll have you cuffed to a radiator so fast it’ll make your head spin.” She scowled. “Oh-kay,” he said, “we’ll try it again.” Using her forearms he turned her around and sat her down on the green plastic chair again, hard.
“Now, damnitall Mrs. Sexton,” he said, “calm yourself down, all right, willya? Don’t make me arrest you for chickenshit stuff, A and B onna a cop? Poof, that’s nothin’. Lug teenage drunks for that alla time, every Saturday night. Whereas you, you got an excellent chance to be different. Right now, unless you make nice with the law, you got a very good chance of makin’ the big time. Because unless we start hearin’ something we haven’t heard here yet, me and Henry, like how much you both wanna help us, we’re gonna run you and your deevoted husband for some very—grown-up—offenses, such as major-league drug trafficking. Get you folks some serious time. Start with fifteen years apiece and then double it—at least, and that’s just gettin’ started.
“You’ll be famous, both of you—big-time desperadoes, inna headlines day or two. Course he’ll be close to eighty, next time you two get your jollies, and they won’t let you dress like that, ma’am, where you’re gonna go—other ladies’d go mad. But fame does have its price.” He smiled. “So’s that what you’d rather do?”
Her eyes were wider now than before, and her mouth formed a dark pink oval. “Timmy!” she yelled. “Don’t say anything. Don’t you say one word these guys.” Then she sat back, hunching her shoulders into the defensive posture, and stared at Dowd. “And I’m not gonna, either,” she said, her face and eyes filled with hope that Dowd would allow her to carry out her defiance.
He nodded slowly. “Much better,” he said. “Now, would you like to take a moment, catch your breath and collect your thoughts here, or are you okay enough now so that we can go out into what I gather is the kitchen, join your husband and Trooper Ferrigno, and I’ll formally advise you both of your rights.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I mean, I’m all right.” She stood up, rubbing her hands down the legs of her jeans as though smoothing a skirt around herself, humming softly and taking a very deep breath, apparently just wanting oxygen. Then at the end of the chorus, she smiled to herself and sang in an undertone, “But you just can’t kill the beast.”
DOWD SAW THAT THEY WERE a team. Under the expressionless steady gaze Ferrigno maintained on them, standing with his arms folded behind Sexton under the speaker and the grey plastic cuckoo clock mounted over the back door, they communicated as much by exchanging glances as by speaking words. The light in the kitchen and dinette, overcrowded by the four of them, came from two multicolored stained-glass Coca-Cola ceiling fixtures; it had a warm and cozy reddish glow. The speaker at low volume played the Boston Pops version of the Glenn Miller arrangement of “St. Louis Blues March.”
Dowd, standing between the refrigerator and the beat-up maple table, feeling as though he was intruding, read the Sextons their rights. While he was doing it Theresa removed a long rolled-up paper tube, secured by an elastic band, from the center of the table and put it on top of the refrigerator. Tim in his wheelchair efficiently collected the three place settings closest to him, stacking the plates at the opposite place in front of Dowd and putting the napkins and the cutlery on top of the stack. Theresa took it from the table and put it on the counter between the stove and sink. “You understand these rights as I have read them to you?” Dowd said.
They conferred by glance and concurred by nodding, she now standing at the table to Dowd’s left, hesitating until Tim had rummaged in his lap and found his prosthesis, so that they could say “Yes” together. She sat down opposite her husband in the chair nearest Dowd.
Dowd separated two copies of the advice-of-rights fo
rm from the stack he had taken from his portfolio. He filled out the names and location sections at the top and put one in front of Tim and the other in front of Theresa, handing her his ballpoint. Ferrigno stepped up behind Tim and handed his ballpoint over Sexton’s right shoulder. The Sextons exchanged glances again before looking down at their forms and signing. “Thank you,” Dowd said, taking back the forms and recovering his pen; Sexton held Ferrigno’s back over his right shoulder and Ferrigno took it.
“I think I’ll just sit down now, myself,” Dowd said, bending over the table to date, noting the time—7:41 P.M.—and initialing the executed forms before inserting them and the blanks into different compartments of the portfolio. Taking out a tape recorder and a spiral notebook, zipping the portfolio closed and putting it on the counter, he made his way around behind Theresa and pulled out the chair in front of the kitchen window. He sat down, putting the notebook and the tape recorder in the center of the table, then crossed his right leg over his left knee and rested his right hand on his right knee.
Fixing his gaze on Tim he said pleasantly, “So, Mister Sexton, you’ve gotten yourself and your dear wife as well into a huge lake of shit. What’ve you got to say for yourself?”
“I dunno what you’re talking about,” Sexton said, his blue eyes glowering, his left hand at his throat with the prosthesis. “All Terry and I’re doing tonight is we’re celebrating with our friends Lou and Joie.” He used his right hand to gesture at the tape recorder. “That thing on?”
“Nope,” Dowd said, “and as you can see, I’m not writing in the notebook. Like to get to know my subjects first, a little, ’fore I trample on their rights. Your wife mentioned you’re doing that, having some kind of a little party tonight, your friends Lou and Joie. And using the five-star menu, too, filet mignon and Corona. That’s nice. Whatcha celebrating?”
Sexton studied his wife as though to make sure she was all right. Unaware what she had done, he too now tried to show defiance that would reassure her he was not afraid of Dowd and controlled the situation. He managed chiefly to communicate uncertainty, confusion and timidity. “I do know I don’t have to talk to you, if I don’t wanna, you know,” he said.
“I should hope so,” Dowd said. “Every mother’s son who ever saw a TV cop show knows that, and if you maybe missed it, I just got through reminding you.”
Sexton blinked. He looked at his wife for a cue, being as new to their situation as she was. Since it alarmed her to see this, she didn’t have one. She showed the alarm by moving in her chair. That rattled him more, and he licked his lips.
“Mister Sexton,” Dowd said, pouncing, “look, I know you’re nervous. You and your wife here, both. And you should be—you’re both in very serious trouble here. And the fact that you’re completely new to it—trying to pretend otherwise, act like you’re hardened criminals—this isn’t making it any easier for you, either.”
Sexton squirmed in his chair.
Dowd ignored his movements. “Trooper Ferrigno and I know all this, and so we’d like to—and we’re trying, ourselves, honest—to make it a little easier for you.”
Sexton looked incredulous. “Oh, don’t think so?” Dowd said. He smiled. “That shows I’m right. The usual way to go in to make an arrest in a case involving charges as serious as the ones involved in this case is to come in with at least eight officers, in SWAT gear. Surround the house, and instead of ringing the bell and waiting for someone to come answer it, open the door, knock the door down with a ram and come in over it, guns drawn.”
Sexton looked thoughtful. “Sure,” Dowd said, “what you’re thinking now is right. The fact we didn’t do that oughta tell you something. Oughta tell you that we think there might be a way for you and your wife to make things a little easier on yourselves. But the only way you’re ever gonna find that out is if you two can first stop acting like you think you’re starring in some third-rate gangster movie. So that we can start talking to each other—like four more-or-less reasonable adults looking at a great big problem two of them’ve got. And the other two’re just as anxious as they are to help them get out of. See if maybe if they work together there’s a way get it solved, in such a way that it won’t leave the two who’ve got the problem in a situation where their lives’re utterly, completely, and permanently ruined.”
He paused, turned his head and looked at Theresa. “And Mrs. Sexton,” he said, hardening his voice and fixing his gaze on her until she lowered her eyes, “I hope you understand this, too. That based on what we know already, right now you are in this mess just as deep as he is, and if he’s looking at spending the next thirty years to life in a maximum security prison such as Cedar Junction, as he most certainly is, what you’ve got in front of you is a very long time in MCI Framingham. Where we send female offenders in this Commonwealth—and we’re talking years here, many of ’em.”
Dowd swung his gaze back on her husband and was pleased to see that Tim was now as troubled as he was frightened. “Mister Sexton, I’m sure you don’t want that to happen, any more than she does,” he said. “I realize you’ve been through a lot as a result of your military service, and that she must be not only one good-lookin’ lady, as any man can plainly see, but also a damned brave lady. To’ve signed up with you as she has, and helped you make what looks to me at least like a pretty damned good life—out of what has to’ve been a pretty damned depressing start.”
He hesitated, letting it sink in. “And whatever promises you may’ve made to her,” he said, “I know you were a soldier. Not the kind of kid who ran and hid, and found a way out of the draft. You didn’t bullshit her. You told her there’d be days—and might be nights as well; don’t know you get those flashbacks way some Viet vets claim they do—when she’d find it very tough, married to a damaged man.”
As Dowd had intended, Sexton looked miserable. “But as tough as I know you were, being the fair man you are, as straightforward as you must’ve been—when you told her things with you might sometimes get to be awful, awful hard—and as tough as I’m sure she was, when she told you she was sure that she could do it—you never in your life told her, and neither one of you imagined, that if she tied herself to you, she’d wind up doing time.”
He heard Theresa suck her breath in. He ignored her and continued to talk to her husband. “You haven’t got a record, but you’ve been as good as locked up, confined to one military hospital after another for as long as you were, no way to get out on your own. Technically you’ve never done time, but if you go away on this you won’t find the experience all that unfamiliar. A whole lot longer, sure, but you’ll recognize it.” He leaned in closer so that his chin was over Sexton’s right thigh, and he tapped him with his forefinger on the right knee as he spoke.
“She will.” He gestured with his right thumb back over his shoulder toward Theresa. “You know ’cause you’re a man, and all men’ve heard, what happens to young good-lookin’ guys when they get to prison. You of course got nothing to worry about in that respect now, given how old you are and the fact you’re all beaten-up. Unless of course you wanna have something to think about, in which case you’ll be on your own—and good luck to you; I’m sure you’ll find companions without any trouble at all.
“But, so’ll she,” Dowd said. “Whether she wants ’em or not.” He sat up and turned in his chair and looked at her appraisingly. He sighed and shook his head. “Which both of you might wanna think about some,” he said, turning back to Sexton. “Think about what a couple-three of those two-twenty, two-forty black bull dykes they’ve got in there, look like NFL linebackers, wouldn’t love to try on that fresh white Danish pastry.” He glanced back at Theresa; she looked dark and resentful, but she slumped.
“Anyway,” Dowd said, sitting up straight again and folding his arms across his stomach, “that’s about where we are now. And it wasn’t so terribly bad now, was it? Getting to know each other just a little better, where we stand and so forth.” He smiled. “And, now that it’s over with, I do b
elieve I had a question pending. What were you celebrating tonight? Anything to do with that poster?” He used his gaze and eyebrows to indicate the tube on top of the refrigerator.
The little doors above noon on the dial of the cuckoo clock snapped open over Ferrigno’s head, making him start, look upwards and laugh. A little red bird emerged slowly, halfway, and cuckooed seven times. Ferrigno and Dowd frowned and looked at their watches. It was 7:51. They both looked at Theresa. The little red bird retreated slowly and the doors closed over it. “It’s broken,” Theresa said. “It’s been broken forever. I keep asking him …”
Her husband fitted his prosthesis against his throat. “And I keep telling you,” he said, weary and annoyed, “that I can’t. Nobody can. It’s a cheap cuckoo clock I got in the PX in Quang Gang Bang or someplace—someplace I don’t even remember. Probably cost a buck thirty-nine, made in Taiwan, and I was half in the bag. Dunno why I bought it. If I’d known I was doin’ it, I wouldn’t’ve brought it home, but of course I didn’t pack my stuff—I was inna hospital. Someone else did all that for me. My father put it up for me when I got home. Did it to surprise me one day, I was at the VA Brockton, getting therapy. Didn’t know how to tell him I didn’t want it put up, ask him to take it down—I wanted it thrown away. And when he was gone, I couldn’t reach it, take it down. Still can’t. Bothers you? You can reach it—you take it down. Either throw it away or you try to fix it yourself.” He paused, looking disgusted. “But for Chrissakes stop talking about it.”
The speaker played “Little Brown Jug.” Theresa Sexton stared at her husband for a long time, her eyes vacant, as though trying to remember where she’d seen him before. At last Dowd cleared his throat. The sound brought her out of her reverie. “No,” she said, turning to look at Dowd, “it doesn’t matter. I’ll show it to you.” She pushed back from the table and stood up. Her husband made a sound but she disregarded him and reached up, pulling the tube off the top of the refrigerator and putting it down on the table, taking the elastic off and unrolling it. It was a three-by-five-foot color poster. Standing next to her husband’s left side and bending over the table she reached into his lap and lifted up his right hand. She put it down on the poster saying, “You hold the top.” He looked resigned and left his hand there.
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