A change of gravity

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A change of gravity Page 28

by George V. Higgins


  To his ex-officio service as a member of the police station building committee named by the selectmen, he brought strong views tenaciously held on the subject of the proper design of police stations in general and what specific modifications would be appropriate for the one to be built in Canterbury by the F.D. Barrows Construction Co." the contract having been awarded as expected as soon as the tedious business of inviting, receiving, opening and considering competitive sealed bids had been gotten out of the way.

  Merrion was a member of the five-person Building Committee. By then Deputy Clerk of Court, he had been appointed without his prior knowledge or permission and when he was informed, against his wishes at the suggestion of Richard Hammond, Clerk of Courts. Hammond knew Chief Paradisio just as well as anyone else outside his family did, and therefore while he agreed with the selectmen that someone from the courthouse ought to serve on the committee, he did not agree that he should be the one.

  "After all," Hammond told them, "I've got a growing family. Demands on my time. Responsibilities. I've been planning to see as much as I can of my children in the next eight or ten years the two youngest've got left before they get all grown up. If I let you talk me into serving on a committee with Sal Paradise, I wont be able to do that. They'll be planning their weddings by the time I get home from the first meeting. I'll be tied up every night until I'm sixty-five.

  "No, Amby Merrion's your choice. Bachelor like he is, he's got lots of time. Besides, he's pals with Hilliard. These're Hilliard's buildings, right? Way he tells it, anyway, he's the guy that got the money. So put his sidekick on the panel. Pretty soon the chief 11 start to drive him 'round the bend, like he does everybody else who has to listen to him, and then Amby'll go to Hilliard and say: "Hey, for the luv va Christ, help me out here a little bit, willya? Get me some more State dough for Canterbury make yourself look good and at the same time, help me make the chief shut up." And Hilliard'll do it for him, contradict alia mean things that his wife's sayin' about him, 'cause he still wants to look good, 'case he decides to run again."

  Chief Paradisio grounded his views of police station design, as he did his many other views, on his painstakingly careful and extensive study of human nature. "Basically what I am is a professional scientist. My field is the continuing study of human nature," he would say. "All law enforcement officers are engaged in such studies. Or we ought to be at least: it's the essence of our work." Because he habitually delivered his observations and findings in detail and at length whenever he believed that he had been invited to state and then defend any given premise 'and has such stamina," Dan Hilliard said, 'guy's a one-man filibuster; he can stay awake for days' he generally prevailed against all who initially opposed any premise he happened to advance.

  "It's a universal tendency," Chief Paradisio said, 'to want to get away." He was describing without having been asked how people reacted when placed under arrest, believing he saw the inquiry implied in a statement made by someone else at an early meeting of the Building Committee.

  "I think it was, Diane, Diane Fox who was to blame," Merrion told Hilliard over drinks at Henry's Grist Mill two or three nights later.

  Diane's practice as a Licensed Social Worker counseling troubled young people in Hampton Pond was established and thriving. She was on the building committee as an ex-officio member of the board of selectmen, having been elected to serve out the unexpired three-year portion of her late husband's term after Walter's sudden death at the age of forty-two. He had had a heart attack while jogging.

  "I got to the library and went into the trustees' room," where the police station building committee had agreed to meet, 'and I was hanging up my coat. The rest of them the chief, Diane, Maurice Belding and Gerry Porter they'd already gotten there ahead of me, and so they all were sitting down, and Diane, while they're waiting for me to join them at the table just by way of no harm sort of threw it out that she'd been afraid she was going to be late because the cat'd gotten out. And she'd thought at least 'til she found it sleeping on the hood, her car, which I guess was nice and warm, this being a cold night, because she'd just gotten home to feed the cat and let it out, expecting it'd come right back in; that was the reason she'd stopped off there that it'd run away.

  "And that was what set Sal off about how come people run away. I pity people who have to deal with him every day. The guy is unbelievable."

  The chief said the desire to run away was the reason behind his desire for an internal receiving area for prisoners in the new police station.

  "It's just a normal human thing, I guess," the chief said, 'that when someone has you restrained; you're under his cojatrol; he's bigger, stronger, younger'n you are, most likely, and he's armed, to boot; plus there may be more'n one of him so that you're outnumbered too, and all of them're authorized to use deadly force, on you; well, it's naturally upsetting. You're probably not used to this, in all likelihood, and so it would be perfectly natural then that you would feel confined. Being as you are. And since you have been brought up in this country of ours here, as most of us have been, you have always had the notion that you are well, what else? free And you are used to that. So now this guy in uniform, or maybe it's two guys, or one or two guys in plainclothes, could be that as well, whatever, but what you know is that they're cops, he has you in custody, and you are not free to go. And why would this be, then? Well, unless someone made a mistake which we don't make a habit of doing and I want to assure everybody here of that right now on that point normally it's going to be because you did something.

  "It don't matter, really, does it, though, what it was. Because the overall effect's always the same. If you're drunk or operating under, you had a fight or something, or you're beating up the wife. Or you're breaking in a building. Or maybe you had drugs in your possession that you're selling someone, right? And you know you're not supposed to do that. But you're always on the lookout, aren'tcha, for the easy buck, and now it turns out, joke's on you, guy you're selling to's a cop, badge and everything. And he placed you under arrest. So here you are now; you've been arrested. Now you're going to the lock-up.

  "Now at the present time if you would like to come down to the station as it is configured, the one on Lannan Street there, any night you care to come, although there'll generally be more to see on a weekend night as Mister Mernon can tell you, having been there setting bail a good many weekend nights for people we've arrested, Friday or a Saturday.

  Unless it's one of those three-day holidays it seems like we're always getting now, at least one a month, in which case Sunday night as well we will have a lot of traffic usually, that is. And the first thing you will see down there, and I will show you this myself or have a sergeant escort you, because sometimes one of these guys that we've got arrested will decide, you know, because he's drunk, he'll decide he wants to fight.

  "This is also very common. A big part of our job as law enforcement officers involves fighting with drunks. If you want to be a police officer, you have to face that. It's reality. And when we arrest a guy for that, he's quite often going to get unruly with us, and we have to subdue him there, show him what the Mace is like, blast of that stuff in the face, get his mind off fighting us. And what you will then see is that when the cruisers pull up at the back door of the station, right on Lannan Street, with everybody passing by, you will have both your pedestrian and your vehicular traffic there as well. And this is where my men have to come to discharge their passengers, and not only the officers of the police department but also the State Police if this happens to be one of their arrests that they have made and they are bringing him to us. Or her, could be a woman; we do have to arrest the women sometimes too, although nowhere near as many. To be secured in our lock-up until someone can come and get this man or woman out.

  "And the very first thing that you will instantly observe in virtually every single case, and virtually without exception, is that every suspect who gets out, he's got his hands behind his back account of how he's cuffed and all, the f
irst thing that he always does, and I don't care he's drunk or sober, or he's on some controlled substance and he's higher'n a kite, but the first thing he does before he does another thing is: He takes a look around. And we all know what he is thinkin', every single time, no matter who it is. He's thinkin': "How can I get out of here?" How can he escape?"

  The chief always stressed the sibilance of the initial syllable of the verb, relentlessly telling officers who mispronounced the word that 'when people hear you sayin' ex-cape like there was an X in it, which there is not, and which you just did, they think you are stupid or else ignorant, which you do not want. So therefore don't let me hear you doing it around here."

  "Now of course this makes no sense at all, no question about that.

  Usually the charge that we have got against you, when we bring you in, well, the fact is that you may've gotten everybody good and mad at you, doing what you did, may've even hurt someone, but the fact is still that usually it's a fairly minor charge.

  "Now when I say that I don't mean you think that it's minor, that it's a minor thing. That if it's operatin' under for example, so you stand to lose your license, sixty, ninety days, a year, whatever it may be; or this time you're gonna have to take that course they give you if you've been caught for doing this, and it's therefore gonna cost you.

  You not only have to go to all those lecture-sessions that they have so there goes your evenings free and you are gonna have to sit now with a bunch ah drunks that you now belong with; which you don't like thinkin' either, but you haven't got no choice now; you have proved it, you belong and look at all those awful bloody pictures that they show. As many nights as that takes, and you're gonna have to pay for them, the cost of going to them, and that's no small amount, you find. Four, five hundred bucks I guess, is what they're getting for it now. You don't like that at all.

  "And we don't blame you. But just the same, it isn't like this has to be the end of the whole world for you now. You're embarrassed, sure you are, and you ought to be, whatever it is you've done. But you're not the first one, done it. You're not gonna be the last. So what you want to do is take your medicine and learn from it, learn something from this bad event. Then put it all behind you and act like a normal person, and see that from now on you behave yourself so that you don't have no more trouble, which of course is what you want. That's what we all want, all of us, just to be left alone. And if you do like you're supposed to, chances are, that's how this will all turn out.

  "But if you actually do it, if you actually try to escape, get away from the officers there that've gone to all the trouble of arresting you and don't think they like doin' that, all the paperwork that that entails, and the court appearances and everything like that; they're not gonna do this unless they think they have to but now they've done all that and brought you in, and now you're gonna try to escape7. Well now if you do that, you're gonna be in one big peck of… well, a lot of trouble, anyway, and I trust you all know what it is that I'm talkin' about here.

  "Big trouble. Resistin' arrest. A and B on an officer. Attempted escape, and on and on. No jokes here now. These're all felonies, and we're not gonna show you any mercy. We're just gonna multiply charges up on you; cut you no slack; give you no breaks: that's what we're gonna do. Because you went and acted stupid, and you made us take a chance of where somebody could've gotten really hurt, and we hadda go and stop you, and this always involves risk. That we do not want to have to be taking. If it turns out that nobody got hurt bad, well then, everybody was lucky, that's all. It wasn't no fault of yours.

  And so now we're gonna throw the book at you and you are goin' to jail.

  You didn't want that to happen and we didn't want it to happen. Nobody wanted it to happen, but you went and did what you did, and we can't have you doing that, so now you go to jail.

  "You see what I'm getting at here. What I'm telling you is that now that we have got the opportunity here to design this new facility to meet the needs that we have got in a growing, modern community police department here. "Cause that is what we've got now: a community that's growing, and it's getting bigger all the time, whether we like it or not. And with all the problems that all growing towns everywhere've all got these days, people movin' to the suburbs and it's only gonna just get worse, matter what we do because that's the way it is. And I don't care where you look, we've all got the same kind of problems.

  We're all doin' our best, lookin' for some way to get out of them. And that's why we need to look very carefully at this thing that we're doin' here and make absolutely sure we know exactly what we're doin'.

  And one thing I am tellin' you is that from my point of view as a professional law enforcement officer, lookin' at this thing here, one thing we absolutely positively have to build into this new police facility from the start is an internal reception area for receiving prisoners and any other people that we may be bringing in who're in custody. That we have found it necessary to take into custody, danger of harm to themselves or to others, whatever the reason may be. So that the cruiser car or the wagon, whatever it is there, it just arrives from the scene and what it does then is it pulls right in, right inside the building, and the door shuts, boom, down behind it, just like that." He clapped his hands once.

  "And then we open up the car doors there and we get them unloaded, and march 'em right into the bookin' desk-area there, and advise 'em and mug 'em and print 'em. And from there they go right into the cell.

  Then there they have been at all times since we pulled them out the cruiser: inside of the building, in the lock-up. So they haven't had another look at being outdoors again since they got arrested, because they've never been outdoors again once they got put in the car, the official vehicle there. And they wont be outside again until they've been bailed and discharged and allowed to go free, on their way, with the date set for them to be in court. So once you've done that, see, put the reception area physically inside of the building like I said, you have now just practically eliminated here that completely human tendency and temptation they all always have now, to try to get away and escape, and with all that that entails there, and that's a completely essential thing, I think here, myself."

  Shortly after 9:30 that Saturday evening in August Merrion's beeper went off while he sat cramped in a wicker chair too small for him in the now-glass-enclosed sunporch of the house in Canterbury where he had grown up, watching a taped rerun of final night of a big dog-show that had taken place six months or so earlier in Madison Square Garden in New York, trying idly once more to think of some way he could have a dog again without complicating his life beyond endurance, knowing that there was none. The number that came up on the beeper screen in faint light-emitting-diode grey was for the administrative line at the Canterbury police station. He lifted the wireless remote telephone handset from the wicker table next to his chair and punched the number in, and when he recognized the answering voice he said: "Hiya, Everett, what we got?" He listened and then he said: "My, my, that's unusual.

  How many involved here?"

  Once more he listened and then said: "Okay, I guess I'd better come down then. Gimme fifteen minutes. Oh, and better give Social Services a call. They may wanna take a hand in this. On second thought, no, make it half an hour. I've got the Westchester Kennel Club show on and we're judging the collies here now. I wanna wait and see who's gets the Best Bitch." He laughed. "Yeah, if it was the courthouse, it'd be no contest at all. Biggest Bitch, anyway-Joanie in Probation, win that one hands-down. Anyway, just tell 'em I'm putting my pants on and they keep their shirts on and I'm on my way; I'll be there, half an hour.

  Have 'em get their money ready, and if they haven't got any, tell 'em they better either use their call to get someone who's got cash to spare, or else make friends fast with somebody else in the cell-block who's got some. "Cause this clerk makes no exceptions; otherwise it's Sunday in the slammer." He paused. "Yeah, see you at Sal's motor entrance in about a half an hour."

  He hung up grateful fo
r the call. He had hoped for it. He intended to be generous when he rotated the weekend bail-setting watch (required when the court would not sit the next day because by law no one could be held more than twenty-four hours without bail having been set) among his three assistant clerks. He told them he meant it when he said that it was only because he was being a nice guy that he was offering them the option. He said that if they chose to tie themselves down one or two weekend nights in order to augment their statutory salaries with the magistrate's bail-setting fee of $25 in each case, that would be fine with him. On the other hand, any time that it happened that all three of them preferred to have both weekend evenings free, and forgo the extra money, that would also be all right.

  He had a reason. Richie Hammond had hogged the detail, seldom permitting Merrion or the second and third assistant clerks, Bobby Cooke and Jeanne Flagg, to share the extra money. That had led to some resentment and hard feelings which in turn explained why it was Richie had so much trouble finding anyone who'd pinch-hit for him when he wanted to spend an occasional weekend away. Merrion wanted no such dissension. "And besides," as he told Hilliard, "I'm single, and with what Larry left me, I don't need the fuckin' money. I just put it in my pocket until I get to the bank, put it into my account I'm saving up for when I have to buy my next car. Keep a record every dime, fuckin'

  IRS thinks they're gonna grab me puttin' cash into my pocket without payin' taxes on it, they can go and think again. That's the first place that the bastards look. I'd be stupid if I did that, and I'd be just as stupid, too, I didn't, let the kids take what they want."

  The weekend totals varied with the seasons. There were almost always at least four or five unlucky drivers whose dead headlights, faulty brake-lights or imperfect recognition of passing zones or stop signs justified a roving cop's decision to pull them over and require them to show their licenses and registrations, leading to arrests for suspended or missing documents, or operating under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. Documentation of their releases on personal recognizance in the amount of $100, promises of payment that would come due if they failed to appear the next day court was open to be processed and enter pleas, would yield a total of at least a hundred bucks a night. More often than not a Friday evening would produce an angrily baffled male whose frustrating week at work or out of it had convinced him that the only cure for his malaise was more beer than his ordinarily peaceful disposition could tolerate without becoming profane and noisy, frightening his wife into believing that violence would be next and causing her to call the cops. That would add another twenty-five dollars to the magistrate's net pay. Sometimes around graduation time or during the football season the State cops would break up an off-campus keg-party at a summer cottage on one of the lakes or a skinny-dipping outing at the reservoir, bagging a small herd of underage drinkers and public urinators whose releases from the lock-up in Hampton Pond would bring two or three hundred dollars. In the late Eighties the increasing traffic in crack cocaine had spawned an increase as well in the number of magistrate's fees, arrests for dealing it adding fifty to a hundred dollars a night.

 

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