A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  "She's probably down at the convenience store there," Merrion said, 'stocking up on butts and scratch tickets."

  "Dunno," Paradisio said. "All's I know is that I couldn't get ahold of her, either, to even ask, so I don't know if they're still shacked up.

  Even though you told her she hadda make him leave. But still, pending when we find Lowell and get a chance to ask him a few things about this woman claims to be his daughter: I can't find either from our files or from what Daggett'd tell me Louella over DSS. You know, there are times when I think I really hate that woman.

  "Seriously," he said, when Merrion laughed. "I don't know if you'd be familiar with her, with this woman, Judge. But I do know my friend Amby here is, and that's why he's laughing now. He knows how much fun it is when you've got a question that you need an answer to, right away. It'll take you about two or three days to get it through channels, maybe even back and forth with Washington, much more tim en you've got. Louella could answer it for you in about fifteen seconds if she would, but she wont. She says she can't, but the real reason is she wont. She just hates giving out information. I don't know what it is, protecting her clients against us? Doesn't make any sense; we're trying to help them. But if you can get the time of day out of that one, you're doing better'n I am."

  "Sam always speaks very lowly of Louella, Judge," Merrion said to Cavanaugh. "I've told him many times he shouldn't do it, but he just wont seem to stop."

  "For the record, Sam," Cavanaugh said, 'she wont tell me anything either. If instead of dumping the chore on Amby, I pick up the phone and make the call myself, the result is the same. I get the same answer both of you get. The woman was born saying: "No." No wonder she's never been married. She's probably still a virgin."

  "Yeah, well, I guess I'm glad to hear that," Paradisio said. "At least now I know it's not just me, not just Feds and all, some grudge she's got against us. Makes me feel a little better, know at least I'm not alone.

  "But anyway, Lowell gave us the Shepard woman's address as the place where he'd be living before he got out of jail last March and ended up here, lucky us. He told us she's a niece of his. He definitely did not say she's his daughter. But according to him she'd be thirty-four not thirty-two, as she told the Park Rangers. She's a ninth-grade dropout from a school in Lockport, New York. Those three kids she had with her all named after movie stars are by three different fathers.

  '"His niece," now?" Cavanaugh said.

  "Yeah, "niece," Paradisio said. "Look, I know I don't look too good on this. I didn't do that great a job here. But my guess is she isn't his niece. My guess's that there's some connection between where he was, right before he robbed that last bank with the machine gun after he got out from McNeil Island. He's got some connection out there in New York State that we really don't know all that much about yet. We're not that far along. And then when he got out last spring he came back here and moved in with this Linda Shepard and her three kids, down in Springfield. This Ronald Bennett that you tell me was with her: we don't know where he came from.

  "She had a place on State Street way the hell out up beyond the Armory there, up near Winchester Square. Not a bad place at all, pretty roomy; should've been enough for her. Three bedrooms, small dining room, big living room, reasonably good-sized kitchen, not that you'd wanna try and cook a banquet in it, anything; but still, you know, for nothin'? Should've been okay for her. Plus it had a bath-a-half. It's a mostly minority section, African-American and Puerto Rican. That does make it sort of surprising she'd seek that out, want to locate herself up there with them. Lookin' for the trouble, the first place, or else she wouldn't've gone there. But in her circumstances? She's got three kids and she's on welfare: how much choice'd she have? And besides, Lowell's mixed blood himself, half black and white, half Hispanic. He knew he was getting' out, maybe he wanted to live there.

  "Anyway, that's where she was when Lowell showed up and moved in. Eight or nine weeks after that, it's June, and now Bennett joins the party here, and then not too long after that, they all hadda move out. Which brings us up to the events of this weekend. And that's where you come in here, I guess, Amby."

  "Okay," Merrion said. "Putting together what the Rangers and then the cops were able to get out of this woman last Saddy night, plus what I was able on my own before court this morning, managed to pry outta Daggett, everything was hunky-dory with Shepard and the kids until Chappelle showed up. Everyone was doin' fine. Wasn't workin', of course, nothin' quite as dramatic as getting' a job, maybe doing something now and then to earn her keep, but with the Essesseye and the Food Stamps and the AFDC and the rent subsidy, well, they're getting' along. They're warm and they're eatin' and they've got clothes to wear and the kids seem to've been going to school.

  "Bennett may've already been there, against the welfare rules, when Chappelle showed up and made him get out. Then Bennett wasn't there for a while. For about six weeks after Chappelle got there, things were quiet. But that changed. The neighbors start complaining about noise in the Shepard apartment, and then the cops get called. And then Shepard decides one night, fuck the neighbors, and throws a party that turns into a round-robin fistfight, everybody goin' at it, fightin' everybody else. Naturally the night wont be complete until the cops're called. So she gets on the telephone herself and invites them to come up.

  "Cops arrive and what they find is that there are about a dozen people in the place, and all of them seem to be either drunk or stoned. Some of them're also bleedin'. Except for Mister Chappelle. He's as sober as a judge, begging your Honor's pardon here, and he takes it upon himself to inform the cops that he's been visiting his niece, Miss Shepard, since he got released from jail, and frankly he don't like the way she lives. Doesn't approve of her life-style. Tells the cops confidentially he's got reason to believe she's been supplementing her income by entertaining gentlemen callers and taking money from them.

  Which is another activity not allowed welfare recipients.

  "Naturally the cops are shocked. But feeling that it's only fair to give this woman a chance to defend her good name and reputation, they take her aside and ask her if she'd care to comment on reports that she may be doin' a little light hookin'. She's understandably upset to hear that someone's been saying such things about her, and after telling them that she's a good girl and wouldn't think of doing such things, worms the name of the stoolie out of them. Then, while they are still there, the cops're still in the apartment, she flies into a fucking rage and goes berserk, grabs ahold of a rum jug, and goes after Brother Chappelle, screaming like a fuckin' banshee. Before the cops can grab her she bangs him on the head with the jug, and breaks it.

  It's not empty. The booze goes all over the place, all over him an' the gas stove. He falls against it. That turns on the stove, which sets the rum on fire. So you've got flames leaping up from the stove and his clothes; cops're beating them out with dishtowels or something.

  And while that's going on, she's still got the handle and the jagged neck of the jug left, so she goes after him with that and opens up his face before the cops can separate them again.

  "This throws a damper on the party, so the cops decide to have some of them arrest Miss Shepard and take her down to the station. And never mind the EMTs, just have some of the other cops who after all're right there on the scene transport Chappelle to the ER and get him repaired.

  The next day after the judge has heard all about this in Springfield District Court, the upshot of it is that Miss Shepard gets a stern lecture and a year's probation — because she has no money to pay a fine and nobody to stay with the kids if she goes to the cooler, and it seems like that's about the only thing anybody can do to her without going to a hell of a lot of trouble finding foster homes for the kids.

  "Mister Chappelle, on the other hand, all stitched and bandaged up like he is, is ordered to stay away from her, or the first thing that he knows he'll be back in the federal lockup for violating probation by making a nuisance of himself under State law. Miste
r Chappelle states his opinion this is a gross miscarriage of justice, him being threatened with going back to jail. He points out that after all, she's the one who did all the damage, cut his face up with a broken bottle, so she's the one should go to jail. The judge is unmoved and tells Mister Chappelle that if he doesn't like getting his face all cut up and Miss Shepard is the one who last did it to him, all he has to do's obey the order, stay away from Miss Shepard, and he should be fine. Oh, and also inna future maybe think twice before he starts going around telling cops any hostess of his is also selling her ass.

  That isn't exactly what the judge said just pretty much what he meant."

  "Except that nobody in Springfield then ever gets around to telling me about this," Paradisio said.

  "Or else they did call but you were out, and they got that bitch of a secretary of yours, and she had something else to do, like pick her nose, so she didn't bother telling you," Merrion said. "As we know's been known to happen."

  "That could be," Paradisio said.

  "As a further result of all of this brouhaha," Merrion said, 'at least according to Louella, a week or two later when Miss Shepard's landlord he lives over in Agawam; owns a number of apartments, all of which are slums finally gets wind of what went on in the one up in Winchester Square that night, he decides it's his turn to get upset.

  So he orders her to quit and vacate the premises. Says he's trying to run a classy joint there and she's not helping him to do this, so therefore out she goes. This gets the social workers started digging into the whole mess, trying to resettle Miss Shepard.

  "They find no sign of Chappelle. He seems to be gone from the scene probably because he's now taken up with our Janet in apartment fourteen at Sixteen-ninety-two Ike, but this fact hasn't yet reached either Sam's attention or ours. What the social workers do find is that Bennett is now keeping Miss Shepard company. Miss Shepard is informed that she can't expect to get another subsidized place for herself as long as Bennett's with her. At least under the statute, he's an able-bodied male. He's supposed to work. She takes offense at this and says what they're planning to do is get married. The case worker says weddings're nice, but that the money she's been getting isn't for supporting unemployed fiances or husbands, either, as far as that goes.

  They put her and the three kids up in a motel temporarily, 'til they can find an apartment for her, but with strict orders to Bennett to stay out, and to her not to let him come in. He ignores his orders and she ignores hers and the case-worker catches them and boots the whole bunch of them out. That's the last that anyone at DSS hears of any of them until the Ranger posse rounds them up on Saturday and dumps them here in our lap."

  "Okay," Cavanaugh said to Merrion, 'so, where does that leave us all now with Janet? Is the ball in your court here, this afternoon? Or can you kick it back into Sam's?"

  Merrion stared at Cavanaugh. He did not say anything. "I didn't say anything," he told Hilliard that night, 'because I didn't know what to say. Sam said that Well, as far as he was concerned, he's already looking for Chappelle. Now that the guy is officially missing, or whatever you call it when his probation officer who's supposed to know at all times where he's living, and Sam doesn't, it's his job to find him. As far as I'm concerned, I thought once I'd spoken to Louella, gotten her onto the case with the woman and the three kids, that then until the dame comes into court, as she's now going to do tomorrow, the only thing I have to do is sit tight and see what the hell happens. And anyway, where's the judge fit in all this? This's the part I don't like. It seems like Lennie's saying he's got nothing to do; he's just a spectator here. Janet's now completely my responsibility, like the whole thing was my idea. So I didn't answer him.

  "And then after that, Sammy's gone, I'm still there in his chambers, I dunno, picking up, something, throwing the sandwich wrappers away, and the bastard does it again. "What plans've you got to handle this damned problem with Janet? Think you can find her today?"

  "I looked at him. "Len," I said when we're by ourselves, we're on a first-name basis "you're making me nervous, talking like that. Like Janet's now my foster child. I've told her what we want done. Had her in Saturday for that. If she doesn't do what I said; keeps on entertaining the guy, then the only thing I can see that we can do is call up her case and get rid of it. It wont cause any stir. It's only attempted larceny and she's been outta trouble almost a year. It'll look okay if we broom it. And there's no way we can try the fuckin' thing now, as both of us very well know. The cops haven't got any witnesses left. So the way that I look at it, that's our only choice."

  "So that was when he said to me could I get on that and track her down right this afternoon after work there, mark it up for tomorrow and bring her in right after lunch, "when no one's around. Call it up, blow it out and get rid of it here. Or maybe just lose it, like Chassy and Larry used to do, when they were playing their games."

  "Well, I wasn't gonna argue with him. So I just said I couldn't do that or anything else today. I said I hadda see Pooler. And that's when he said to me, outta the blue: "Bob Pooler? Why've you gotta see Pooler? Are you in that too? That federal mess I've been hearing about? I assumed he'd be Hilliard's lawyer."

  TWENTY-THREE

  Robert Pooler in a dark blue suit, medium-blue broadly striped white-collared shirt and red-and-blue geometrically patterned tie had a rural-looking goat-shouldered younger man by the right elbow when Merrion spotted him. The younger man, bald except for an inch-wide fringe of brown hair from ear to ear, wore a narrow maroon knit tie, a homespun-grey shirt, voluminous pleated grey pants, brownish suede shoes and a worried expression. They emerged from a doorway partway down the long corridor leading away from the reception area into the southeasterly corner of the eleventh floor of the office tower in the Bay State West complex on Main Street in Springfield.

  "I haven't been in there since they had the time for the governor back in Eighty-eight. Five hundred a head for cocktails and peanuts, not even cashews for Christ sake, and then the bastard's a no-show. No wonder he lost. But they've still got that hush, like a shrine."

  Merrion and Hilliard had the bar at Grey Hills to themselves that evening, the honor system operating on weekday nights that attracted few members in the off-season. "Still very classy. Maybe even a bit deeper, more luxurious, like they had it reupholstered in a heavier fabric. They must have to have somebody come in every year or so to clean it, don't you think? "First of May again, Fleason. Time to call the hush-cleaning people; steam all the wickedness out, freshen up the deception area."

  About half a minute earlier the receptionist, a light-skinned middle-aged black woman with a blunt haircut and a hangdog expression not quite masking undifferentiated hostility had patronizingly taken his name, nodding, 'to see Mister Pooler."

  "Not actually saying, but obviously meaning," Merrion told Hilliard, '"Oh, well, then, you must be in one heavy peck ah shit there, chile, you here to see Mister Pooler."

  She had responded by keying a button on her telephone desk set when the light glowed steady red, in a tone verging on insolence she said: "A Mister Merrion to see you, sir." Then she had said haughtily to Merrion: "Mister Pooler will see you shortly. If you'll just have a seat."

  Merrion told Hilliard 'the attitude's about the same as ever, too, I'd have to say. Every time I've had any kind of contact with Butler, Corey no more'n two or three other times in my life; don't see much of their ilk in the lowly district court I've always kind of wondered what gives with that bunch. They've got more attitude'n the fuckin' IRS.

  What is it with a law firm that looks down on people who've got problems like they're dirt? They should be glad to see us. Isn't that what they're for, for the luv va Mike? Help people with their problems if they've got 'em; help them not to get 'em if so far they've been lucky isn't that what lawyers do?" '"Do," yes," Hilliard said. "Talk about, no. The good ones're sort of like successful call girls. Truly elegant call girls never took many calls anyway, even before they moved up. They considered the
mselves "models" or "actresses," sometimes "flight attendants." In Europe a century ago they were "courtesans." Their looks brought them to the attention of refined gentlemen. Their skills prompted the gentlemen to display them to their friends, also gentlemen of taste and breeding. If fate was kind, one of them made a flattering offer of an exclusive arrangement. The working girls became fine ladies, far above their previous calling, so far above it they may never've done it. They live at stylish addresses, two or three of them: city; winter; summer. Their clothes are in excellent taste. They have cars and drivers, to carry them to shops and lunch. They arrange formal but intimate dinners for thirty or forty, all without batting an eye. They talk about the theater and the ballet, and what's going on in the art world. What they do for what all of this costs still goes for about the same price they charged while they were on a fee-for-service basis, now under exclusive long-term contract to the one refined gentleman, one of marriage. What they act as though they do and prefer to talk about are not that sort of thing at all. Your top law firms behave the same way."

  The slope-shouldered younger man had a manila folder thick with yellow papers in his left hand. Pooler was talking as the two of them walked up the corridor toward where Merrion sat in a red leather wing chair next to a reading table with a brass lamp. He could not recall ever having seen Pooler when he had not either been talking or else waiting with poorly concealed impatience for someone else to finish saying whatever was taking so long. Then Pooler would expel "Yes," from his mouth in a whinnying sigh of relief implying: regardless of that and resume talking.

  The younger man, three to five inches taller than Pooler at five-eight or so like nearly every normal adult male, Merrion thought, with what he recognized as mean pleasure was stooping slightly, inclining his shiny head so as to hear clearly what Pooler was saying. That made it look as though he was deferring to Pooler.