A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  "I dunno what to make of this bird. He looks like he should be able to take care of himself all right, but he says she's always telling him he's got to sleep sometime. That's all she says, nothin' else, but that's enough for him: he thinks that means that when he sleeps she's gonna get him. So, what do I know, huh? Ellsworth says he hasn't been able to get any rest. He's afraid to go to sleep. Says he's afraid if he does, his devoted wife Sheila, she gets a few too many drinks in her, she'll come and stick a bread knife in him while he's got his eyes closed and he can't defend himself.

  "And then we got the Federico matter comin' up again, for your listening pleasure. Johnny Federico. His wife's name is Tishie, you recall. You oughta be pretty close to being on a first-name basis now.

  You put the paper on him, week ago, and far as we know, until yesterday he's okay, left her alone. Now she says she wants him violated. Had him picked up on the restraining order early last night. Cops held him overnight in the lock-up up the Pond, meditate upon his sins.

  "She says he come home Sunday evening; he'd been to the ballgame, Sons of Italy from Holyoke hired a bus, took it down to Fenway Park, an' he had too much beer to drink. Must've got it onna bus. That horse-piss they sell at the ball-park now hasn't got enough kick in it give a young nun half a charge. Got back to Holyoke all fulla beer, and he decided: "Well, this'd be an awful good time, go back home and violate the order." Which he knows perfectly well he's not supposed to do, since you told him to stay the hell away from her and leave her alone.

  But he went there and started whalin' the shit outta her again.

  Neighbors called the cops but he either heard 'em comin' or else he got tired and left when they got there he was gone. She makes out a complaint though, so they're onna lookout for him, and they grab him six this morning, someone spots him sleepin' it off inna park. So that's what he did last night. And if he tries to tell you that it wasn't him, ask him who it was; we gotta find him, 'cause he's mean.

  Her face's all bruised. He kicked her a couple times too, for good measure. Good thing for her he's not a soccer fan, he does this after a baseball game.

  "Says she wants him put away this time. Ludlow, Lancaster; anywhere they got a bed anna lock onna door he can't open from the inside. Not changin' her mind this time, backin' down from this man any more."

  "Uh huh," the judge said, 'well, we'll see about that, wont we? She has before, I recall."

  "Twice," Merrion said. "Twice she's done it to us. Come in and said "This time he's got to go." And then when you tell him he's gonna do six months, she's starts to scream and holler, "No, no, you can't do that. How'm I gonna pay the rent, you put my Johnny in jail? Never see my man again."

  "Ain't love grand," Cavanaugh said.

  Four of the matters on the docket that Monday were bail revocations; the defendants had attracted attention to themselves by doing something sufficiently annoying to interest cops. The cops instead of immediately arresting them had detained them long enough to type their names into the computer. There without surprise they had found there was no need to make a new arrest of the annoying person, necessitating another paperwork-hassle to take him out of circulation; he'd already failed to show up to answer charges lodged against him by other cops on one or more previous occasions. Therefore he could be rousted on the basis of the existing paperwork and taken off the street.

  Three were hearings on probation-office motions for orders to commit probationers who had exceeded the considerable patience of their supervising officers, usually first by not bothering to show up for their appointments and then making it worse by disappearing when the probation officers went looking for them.

  One case was a State Police turnpike speeding ticket charging the defendant with operating his motor vehicle in excess of 90 miles an hour, but not with operating so that the lives and safety of the public might have been endangered. This meant that after an exhilarating pursuit with whooping siren and flashing multi-colored strobe-lights through early-morning thin or non-existent other traffic the cop had arrested him for doing triple digits but otherwise driving competently, and that the driver once pulled-over had been sober and polite, with all his papers in good order, and had not insulted the cop's intelligence by trying to lie his way out of it. The cop had given him a break, so now the guy was going to see whether being sober and polite maybe even contrite in the courtroom would get him found Not Guilty, thus rescuing him from a fine, surfine and costs that would set him back just under $400, and guarantee a surcharge on his car insurance every year for the next five that would make him feel like he was bleeding from the ears each time he paid it. If the cop showed up to give evidence, the gambit wouldn't work, but neither Merrion nor Cavanaugh ever blamed a guy for trying.

  There were four drunk-and-disorder lies two of them combined with charges of making an affray, the arrests having been made in bars in Hampton Pond and Cumberland after the managers carried out threats to call the cops if noisily quarrelsome patrons refused to quiet down.

  There were two cases of driving under the influence of alcohol. There were three narcotics cases, two of them the people Merrion had met in the Canterbury lock-up Saturday night.

  "On the Rosenbaum matter," Merrion whispered to Cavanaugh, 'the Rosenbaum and also the Fernandez matter, Leah Rosenbaum and Felipe Fernandez, his goes with hers. She's the barmaid up at Cannonball's.

  You can see her sittin' back there in the third row, over to the left beside the wall, young broad with big tits and a long blondish ponytail, see her over there?"

  "Sleeveless red blouse, tight white jeans?" Cavanaugh whispered. "She the one that just stood up there?"

  Merrion turned enough so that he could sneak a glance over his right shoulder. Leah Rosenbaum had inflated her chest and was tucking her shirt in, looking toward the bench; she saw him peeking. She smirked.

  He felt his neck getting red. "That's her," he said, turning back.

  Cavanaugh concealed a smile from everyone in the courtroom but Merrion.

  Merrion tried to ignore him. "Fernandez's the movie-star dude with the black hairdo sittin' next to her there. He's her foot-soldier, gofer delivery boy.

  "Cocaine charge. Fairly heavy one, about thirty-five grams, time you get through. State Police matter. We've had a call from Mister Cohen's office this morning, and they say he'll be representing Miss Rosenbaum, and maybe well, make that "probably" — Fernandez as well. But he's engaged before Judge Segal in the probate court up in Northampton this morning, will be all day, and so he asks at least that both these matters be held for second call, so they can get somebody here to enter pleas for them. But preferably just go off the calendar, put over for a week, if that would be okay with you here, until he's had a chance to have a talk with the DA. Let it go off the list 'til a week from Tuesday. See whether they can work something out, maybe avoid a trial here."

  "Geoffrey Cohen's handling drug cases now?" Cavanaugh murmured, raising his right eyebrow. "My my. Music of the Renaissance and crack cocaine. "Tonight my friends, for you we have: con certi by Corelli and Scarlatti, and a gram or two." Quite a combination. Branching out a bit, is he?"

  "Looks like," Merrion said. "Hard even for him, I guess, as much as he must be makin," all of those domestic cases, resist the kind of retainers dopers offer these days."

  "Continuance look all right to you on it?" Cavanaugh whispered. "Look, I know if Geoffrey's on it, oughta be okay, his word's usually good.

  But you hadda close look at these two birds: think there's any chance they'll flee?"

  "Aww, I'd doubt it," Merrion said. "You always got that chance, of course, maybe the bastards bolt. But they had since Saddy-night to run and here they are today. I'd say "No, I don't think so." They look all right to me."

  Cavanaugh nodded. "Off the list then," he said. "Give Geoff his week, which as usual with him's gonna come to about nine days. Like they say about his divorces: when he represents the wife, he thinks her half a hundred grand oughta work out to about seventy-fiv
e thousand bucks. But what the hell; like you say: anything to avoid a trial here."

  Other cases were: one larceny by check; one grand larceny, motor vehicle; one petty larceny, shoplifting; one failure to heed a Stop sign, Canterbury; four attaching plates, uninsured and unregistered motor vehicle; and eleven cruelty to animals. "Guy had fourteen dogs penned up in his garage, Judge," Merrion said. "Hadda car in there with them too. Old Packard, hadn't driven it for years. Nobody knows why he had them, the dogs. They weren't pedigreed, reported stolen or anything. Seemed all right, they talked to him; perfectly-normal old guy. Told the cops all it was was he liked dogs. But he hadn't been feeding them, giving them any water, which seemed kind of strange, guy who liked dogs as much as he did. Or letting them go out, either. Dog officer said the garage was filthy, stunk like hell overpowering. That was why the neighbors finally complained. But then it took her over a week to get out there. By then three dogs were dead. Those animal officers: male or female, doesn't make any difference. They all scream and holler how they want the job, and then when they get it none of 'em give a good shit about doin' it. Don't care about the animals at all.

  All they want's to get off the clock and have no one over them, no one they gotta report to. Then they can goof off the whole live-long day, and no one even misses them. They're always saying how overworked they are, and the towns don't give them enough money. But why should we?

  They do such a lousy job. But so anyway, we got the old guy. Dunno what the hell you do with him. He's too old to put him in jail. Fine him? Just come out of his Social Security; that's all he's got to live on. He doesn't have any dough."

  "Oh shit, I dunno," Cavanaugh said. "Put it down at the end of the list. Maybe by then I'll think of something. Or he'll do the right thing and die."

  There were three breaking and entering charges, one of them Ottawa Johnson's. There were the two trespassing cases brought against the woman and the man arrested by the Rangers in the Canterbury State Forest. "That'd be the Shepard and the Bennett matters, Judge,"

  Merrion whispered.

  "Trespassing," Cavanaugh murmured, even though he still had his hand over the mouthpiece of the microphone. "How the hell can somebody trespass in a State Forest? Thought that was the whole idea the damned thing: Nobody owns it; we all do. Supposed to be open to the public' "Yeah, but with some limitations, your honor," Merrion whispered. "Two weeks, six bucks a night. Your time limit's up, you go home. This woman, she's the Shepard, here, and her three kids and her shit-bum boyfriend, he's the Bennett, Robert," checking papers, 'no, sorry, Ronald, Ronald Bennett: all of them, the five of them, what they've been doin's they've been been livin' there since June. Best anyone can tell. They all look like it's been at least since June, they hadda bath. Mean to tell you, these folks stink. Rangers go up there, gonna bring 'em all in? Before they could do it, take 'em out the cabin, they hadda go and get a buncha cardboard boxes, liquor cases, you know?

  Down at Wheeler's package store out on Route Five there. And then go back and help her pack up all her household goods and all their clothes and stuff. Pots and pans, everything. Blankets, and these thick quilts and pillows, filthy dirty, all of them all kinds of shit. Whalen told me Rangers said they hadda put the rubber gloves on; God knows what was livin' in that shit. Campin' wasn't what you had these people doin' there; what they were up to was settling-in the place. Gettin' themselves all dug in to stay a while, ready for winter, looked like.

  Like they're woodchucks diggin' a hole for themselves in your lawn.

  See 'em doing that, they're not plannin' on leavin' right off- anytime soon anyway."

  "Holy shit," the judge said. "It's hard to believe, you know, Amby? As long as I been here, hearing this stuff, day after day after day, I get so I think: "I heard all of it, now. I must've heard all of it now."

  And then something else comes along. It gets so you just can't believe half of it, your mind just rejects it, it boggles, the things people dream up to do."

  "Yeah," Merrion said, 'and I got to tell you, where this one's concerned, the camping's not all of it either. This Shepard matter, it's more complicated'n you might think. From what little I could get outta her there, other night up at the station, she may be tied up with our little friend Janet LeClerc'

  The defendants and their families and the witnesses and cops stood and sat and talked and sighed and shrugged. Some of them made faces of disgust. They asked each other questions and ignored those who asked them, and when they were jabbed or poked and asked again, looked annoyed and said that they did not know either. Information about what time it was was popularly sought and repeatedly given. The people moved around with their shoulders hunched as though there might be snipers watching the room. They went from row to row and bench to bench and crowded in, getting angry looks from those they displaced to sit beside people they wanted to talk to; they talked urgently in low voices, glancing furtively every so often up toward the judge's bench, as though plotting against him and Merrion and making sure they would recognize them when the time came to harm them. They took careful note of everyone inside the bar enclosure. People came and went constantly outside the rail. They got up abruptly as though they had just remembered something that they should have done before they entered the courtroom and went out hurriedly through the swinging doors into the main foyer. Right away, as though they had been waiting for the chance, people came from the main foyer through the swinging doors into the courtroom and looked around at the seats vacated by the people who had just gone out. Finding none they liked, the new arrivals leaned against the wall and put their hands in their pockets and sighed.

  Inside the bar enclosure were the prosecutors, cops and lawyers both, and probation officers, two of them plus a third one who came and went with papers. Two lawyers from the Mass. Defenders huddled together, riffling absently through their files. They talked about the Red Sox and how erratically they'd been playing, considering what a bunch of overpaid rich bums they were.

  "For Christ sake, how?" Cavanaugh said. "How the hell can that all be connected with her? Didn't you have her in? Tell her to stay away from undesirable companions? Didn't you talk to her like we agreed and you were going to there?"

  "I had her in," Merrion whispered urgently. "I had her in Saturday morning. I gave her a good talking-to. I told her she hadda, well, you know what I told her. I told her what we said I hadda tell her and make sure she understood. I told her to stop doing what she was doing.

  I told her to cut it the hell out."

  "Well, what did she tell you she'd do then?" Cavanaugh whispered.

  "Tell me what she said to you. Did she tell you she'd do it or not?"

  "I'm trying to," Merrion said. "That's what I'm trying to do here, for Christ sake. If you'd just let me, here, damnit, let me get the words out of my mouth."

  "Well then, do it," Cavanaugh said. "Tell me what she said to you."

  "Look," Merrion said, 'what I did here, I think the best way that we go about this's just let this case of trespassing here that we've got, let it come forward, it's eleventh on the list, and appoint the Mass.

  Defenders on this, and continue it a week. Because this Shepard woman doesn't know and neither does her boyfriend, this Bennett character either; neither one of them has any inkling about the connection that I think we've got here with Janet. Because I don't think Janet's talked to them since I had her in here Saturday. They wouldn't've had any way of knowin' what I said to her then, unless she did. They didn't have no phone or anything, livin' up at the campground. In the State Forest's what I'm saying.

  "And then, what I already did this morning was, I called Sammy Paradise and I asked him, is he free for lunch today. And he said yes, he is, he could do that if we wanted, and so what I thought the best thing we all could do here is if we just get together here, you know, and see if we can get something worked out. Have some sandwiches sent in and we just have them in your office after we recess at One today. Put our heads together here and think abou
t this thing, talk the whole thing over and see what we have got here. What we ought to do. That sound good to you?"

  "If I tell you there are times when I wish I had never been born,"

  Cavanaugh said, 'and you believe that I'm sincere, I really truly mean it, is there any way you know of they can make it retroactive? Anyway you ever heard of it?"

  "Well," Merrion said, becoming more offended, 'all I was just trying to do here was…" when there was a sound almost like someone with a chest-cold coughing during a lull in conversation and then someone with a deep baritone voice who was outside in the main corridor made a loud noise combining a scream of pain with a roar of outrage that stopped all the conversations in mouths-open progress in the courtroom.

  Everyone turned to look at the green-padded swinging doors. Both of them swung open very slowly, tumbling a short, stocky woman with swarthy skin and short black hair, wearing a red, white and green flowered blouse and a short red skirt and red high-heeled shoes off-balance backwards perhaps two feet in the air into the room and then hard onto the floor, so that she landed crashing seated on her large buttocks with her arms outstretched and her feet in the red shoes sticking up in the air. She wore eyeglasses with red frames and her face was contorted, and she had a small silver automatic pistol in her right hand, pointed at the ceiling.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Cavanaugh left hurriedly right after the gunshot. Following several minutes later, Merrion found him, sitting at his desk, still wearing his robe, his hands loosely clenched on the blotter, looking like a man recovering slowly from a sharp, unexpected blow.

  "He looked the way he looked the day he got the million-dollar letter from his Uncle Andy," Merrion said. He and Hilliard were having a late dinner that evening at Grey Hills. "One that said he's giving up the lonely bachelor's life. The old boy over ninety now, still going strong has got a bale of money, and Lennie's more'n just his favorite nephew; since his mother died he's the old guy's only living blood-relative. Ever since I'd first known him, Lennie's been genuflecting to him on the phone at least once a week, goin' down to see him at least once a year. He pretended Red Sox spring training was the reason for the trip, but it wasn't. It really was to keep in touch with Andy. And it was sincere; he wanted his uncle's money, sure, but that wasn't all of it; he really does like the old gent. Even now, Lennie still calls, and goes to see him every year. But you can see the thrill is gone; mostly he was doing it for the money. Before he got that letter, when he was going down there to take a view, his uncle, try to check his vital signs without him noticin', you could see he was lookin' forward to the mission. Now it's obviously a chore, but he still hasta do it; otherwise Andy'll know he never really meant it, all those other years, when he thought he was gonna get alia dough.