A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  There was a narrow rectangular coffee table made of chromium and glass in front of the sofa bed. There was a magazine open on it, displaying a two-page color photo of a blonde woman with dramatically black and green eye shadow that made her green eyes look enormous, and bright scarlet lipstick on her tightly puckered lips; she was naked from the waist up, cupping her grotesquely large breasts in her hands with her thumbs and forefingers urging her nipples forward toward the camera, using so much pressure that the pores of the nipples were spread. There were smears of semen on the picture. The surface of the table showed many rings left by wet glasses. There was a small bud vase with one reddish plastic flower in it; next to it there was a one-pint clear glass mug about half full of a brownish liquid. On the rug under the table there was a pair of tan work boots with lug soles, the right one upright and the left one tipped over on its side. A pair of grey socks with red stripes lay over the boots. A pair of jeans with a black belt and a pair of blue-and-white checked shit-soiled boxer shorts inside were heaped open on the floor, still shaped to the lower body of the person who'd removed them and left them there. There was a white tee-shirt bunched up at the further end of the sofa.

  Over the sofa-bed there was a three-by-four-foot print of a generic mountain-lake vista shaded by overhanging maple branches on a sunny sky-blue day. Four white vees represented four white birds in flight over the lake.

  Merrion remembered first seeing and then gradually growing to dread seeing again another copy of the same picture long before. It had hung over the couch in Larry Lane's apartment. "He)i, that's a very good picture," Larry Lane had said, one day when Merrion sneered at it. "I want you to cut out that talk now, making smart remarks about my lovely picture. We hadda pay a lotta money for that picture. And there's another one of 'em just like it, or almost just like it anyway, in every single unit here. Got 'em to add a little class to the operation. People come and live here, they then decide they don't like 'em? Fine, they can take 'em down. Perfectly all right with us if they got no taste. But when they first come in to see the place and size it up, that picture tells them that this is a classy joint. They can see it. We took extra trouble make these apartments nice.

  "Sure, when they get in they find out you can hear your neighbor two floors down and four doors over if he farts in the bathtub. When it's windy, the walls shake, gets a little drafty, windows rattle. The plumbing ain't that great. The heat comes up it sounds to God like the whole place's gonna blow up with you in it. But they notice those things later, after they paid the deposit. Before that what they notice is that in the living room we have got this fine scenic picture, so they know that we've got taste. Spared no expense on amenities; those pictures cost us three bucks apiece."

  Beyond the couch in the southeasterly corner of the room at the picture window overlooking the boulevard there was a 27-inch Sanyo television set on a TV table with a VCR and a cable-service box under it on the lower shelf. The brief announcement from the local station now concluding was a 30"Second ad describing the superior comforts available from a revolutionary new design in mattress coils.

  Opposite the TV in front of the book cased wall next to the window there was a blue and green reclining chair with an end table and a black metal floor lamp next to it. There was a clear glass one-pint mug on the table; it contained about four ounces of a clear liquid.

  There were two remote control keypads on the table. There was a round purple anodized aluminum ashtray with a coil around the rim to hold cigarettes in place; it was full of stubbed butts. There was a crush proof box of Winstons open next to it.

  Janet LeClerc in a white cotton nightgown decorated with small blue and red flowers with little green leaves and some lace around the yoke, under a thin pink chenille robe, sat curled up in the recliner with her weight resting mainly on her right buttock, the footrest up but not in use, her feet and legs tucked up under her, snoring softly and steadily with her mouth gaping open. Her left eye socket was badly bruised, greenish-blue and swollen puffy.

  When she exhaled she made the kind of rhythmic, low, rumbling, happy growling sound that came from the television, harmonizing with the large tired golden retriever, first seen playing hard with children on a sunny day, now contented lying down after a nutritious dish of choice cuts of meat and meat by-products in real gravy combined in the dog food advertised in one of the brief announcements from the ABC local-affiliate station in Springfield.

  Merrion picked up the VCR remote keypad and punched it twice with no result. Then he picked up the other one and shut the television off.

  "Good," he said. Janet exhaled, making a low whistling sound. Her hair was mussed around her left temple. Her face was flushed and shiny with sweat.

  "You aren't gonna wake her up, are you?" Brody said in a soft voice, as though he had been caring for a sick person whose recovery depended on plenty of rest.

  Merrion snorted but he kept the noise down too. "Sooner or later, I'm gonna, yeah," he said, glancing down at her as he put the remote pad down and then hitched up his pants. "Before I leave here she's gonna have to wake up and tell me some things I want to know, bet your sweet life on that. But first I wanna find out if Chappelle's in here someplace. Like I told you the guy makes me nervous. He's in here someplace with us, I want to know about it. So the first thing I am gonna do is take a look around here."

  Brody remained standing at the door and Merrion crossed the room to the interior hallway. "Maybe the bedroom," he said, talking to reassure himself. "Sleeping it off inna bedroom? Got just as good and drunk as she did last night, but had the sense to go to bed." Brody did not say anything.

  Merrion went through the door and paused at the second door, opening into the bathroom. He pushed it open further and looked in. To his left there was a blue plastic shower curtain drawn around the tub enclosure. Beyond that he could see the front of the flush. All the light came from a high narrow window directly ahead of him. To his right there was a long fluorescent fixture mounted above a large vanity-mirror and a sink enclosed in a countered cabinet below it.

  There was a long white extension cord plugged into a socket at the bottom of the fluorescent fixture; it dropped down from the fixture to the floor beside the cabinet and led across the blue bath mat up to the edge of the tub, where it disappeared behind the shower curtain.

  Merrion stepped back from the bathroom door and went down the hall into the bedroom. The door was ajar. He pushed it open slowly and silently and looked into yellowish window-shaded dimness onto an empty, unmade double bed, a pale-green top sheet and two woolen blankets, one white and one tan, mounded up on a wrinkled and stained pale-green bottom sheet; there were two pillows in pale-green slip cases jumbled together at the head of the bed. There was a small table next to the far side with a clear glass lamp and a small alarm clock on it. There was a four-drawer pine chest of drawers in the far corner of the room. There was a small yellow upholstered chair in the corner to his right; it was filled with a pile of soiled clothing. The room smelled stale and loamy.

  Merrion had no desire to go in. He turned around and started back toward the living room. "Any sign of him?" Brody called softly and hesitantly from the doorway.

  "Nothin'," Merrion said. "Janet isn't what you'd call a great housekeeper, though. "S pretty rank in here."

  "Because see, I was just thinkin'," Brody said, clearing his throat, 'that unless you really hadda, you know, wake her up and ask her things, maybe what we could do here, we could then just go back out, and close the door behind us?"

  "And then she wouldn't ever know that we were in here; you're tryin' to say that to me, Steve? Nobody else'd know that I made you invade this unit this morning?" Merrion was at the bathroom door again. He paused, smiling, and waited for Brody's reply. He could hear Janet snoring peacefully in the next room. Brody did not answer.

  "Steve?" Merrion said. "You still out there? Haven't gone into a panic here, run out on me here, have you? Certainly hope not. You're my witness here, you know, ever
ything I did was kosher, absolutely by the book, from the minute I stepped in. Can't afford to have you leave me in here now, all by myself."

  "Well," Brody said, drawing it out, 'no, I didn't do that. I was just thinking here was that if there wasn't any need, you know, to wake her up, well, it does seem as though she's sleeping pretty sound. Doesn't look like she's gonna wake up by herself."

  "Not unless somebody shows up here with a howitzer and shoots it off in the kitchen, no, I don't think she will," Merrion said. "But I'm still gonna wake her up, Steve, no matter what you say here, and you might as well deal with it it's gonna happen." He pushed the bathroom door all the way open, flipping the light switch outside as he went in. The light did not come on and he hesitated in mid-stride, flipping the switch again. The light did not come on. "Because this bozo she's been hangin' out with's got a pretty vivid history of being dangerous.

  "And therefore what I'm doing here today," he said, using his left hand to pull the shower curtain back, 'is first seeing if I can find out… oh oh. Uh oh.

  "Yeah," he said, looking down at the two brown knobby knees protruding from the grey-cloudy soapy water in the middle of the tub, and under the handles and the faucet and the drain shutoff, the white hair-dryer tethered by its own white cord to the white extension cord, half-submerged between the two feet underneath the faucet at the front of the tub. He could make out the shins and calves of the lower legs buckled up behind the ugly feet, and beyond the knees the black-haired swarthy head with brown staring eyes in the gaping face above the milky surface at the back.

  "What?" Brody said from the other room. "What's going on in there?

  Everything all right?"

  "Yeah, oh yeah," Merrion said, making a brief dismissive brushing gesture with his right hand against his pantsleg. "Yeah, everything's fine here. Well, everything's all right for me, I mean, in here, and probably for you." He heard Brody come into the bathroom behind him.

  "But I don't think it is for him. And if what I'm seein's what I think it is I'm seeing, and I'm damned sure that it is, I don't think it's gonna be all right much longer for our friend Miss Janet out there. Not for some time at least. She's probably in for some excitement, and then a nice long rest. Although maybe not; her lawyer'll be glad to see those bruises. This naked gentleman in front of us I suspect is Lowell Chappelle, and also that he's somewhat dead."

  He yanked the curtain back all the way and stood looking down at the shiny-black-haired dark-skinned man in the tub, his eyes staring and mouth frozen open in the head that looked as though it had been impaled on the rigid neck sticking out of the surface of the grey water covering the shoulders and the torso of the submerged body. "Yes, now I'm sure of it," he said. "No longer any question in my mind he's completely fuckin' dead. My guess is that in this very bathtub, Steve, the late Lowell Chappelle, former well-known desperado, learned last night after a few drinks that his electrifying girlfriend didn't like it when he hit her. Just before he became truly, fuckin', dead."

  He turned aside to let Brody step up to the tub beside him. "You wanna take a look here, Steve? See you recognize him? After all, you know the guy, seen him around, when he was breathin' and so forth. Before this terrible shock. I'd turn the light on for you but I think the fuse's blown."

  Merrion paused expectantly but Brody did not respond. He continued to stare down into the tub. "He kind of stinks, a little," he said. "I would have to say." He stepped back and looked up at Merrion. "You think we should get someone, see if they can, you know, get him out of here maybe, and then maybe do something with him? Undertaker, something? Can't just leave him like this, I don't think, can we? It wouldn't be right to do that. At least not for me, the building and all. We should do something, I think."

  Merrion took Brody's left elbow with his right hand and turned him around to face the bathroom door, propelling him toward it at the same time. "Indeed we should do something, Steve," he said. "You should do something and I should do something, and then after that we should both of us do absolutely nothing. Until the cops get here, and then it'll be all in their hands."

  "The cops?" Brody said, momentarily resisting. "You really sure we need alia that stuff, get the cops up here? TV cameras and stuff, alia trouble they make?"

  "Well, yeah," Merrion said, getting him going again and steering him toward the doorway onto the landing. Janet snored comfortably in the reclining chair, "Yeah, I do think we should have the cops come up and all, it's traditional, you know? Someone looks like he's been murdered, and you find the body? Well, the cops like it if you give them a call. Invite them to come up and look the place over. See there's anything they might like to take note of and so forth in case they decide, later on, they'd like to accuse someone of killing whoever it was, and maybe punish them. A little, anyway. That's the sort of thing they do. And when you help them to do that, they appreciate it.

  You don't call them, they get mad. My experience's always been that if you can do something that cops appreciate, it makes life a lot easier in the long run to do it; I have always found that.

  "So the first thing I think we should do is shut the door and lock it, and have you stand in front of it. We do not want Janet to wake up and figure what we're doin' here, and then decide that this'd be a perfect time to take a hike. Then right after that I am gonna pick the phone up know I saw one, we came in; oh yeah, there it is there, right there by the corner 'frigerator — call ah cops an' get 'em up here, tell 'em what we found. It'll be their baby then."

  "You think she murdered him?" Brody said.

  Merrion shoved him toward the hallway door. Brody lurched forward. "Go over there and shut the fuckin' door, Steve," he said. "Shut the door and lock it and then lean against it, and don't let nobody out, while I get the cops up here and tell 'em how Janet LeClerc killed her boyfriend in the bathtub by switchin' on her hair-dryer an' throwin' it inna tub with him after he fell asleep inna warm water. He'd had a hard day's work getting' his belly full of beer and beatin' his meat and givin' his girlfriend a good beatin'. Betcha when that Conair splashed it got his attention. Helluva thing to do to a man, I must say. Jesus, what a surprise. Bops the daffy girlfriend in the eye, just a little innocent fun, and what does she do but electrocute him.

  I don't know how long he lived after she did it, but I will bet you one thing sure: not long enough to forget it."

  "I can't," Brody said, after he had shut the door and had shaken himself to regain his composure, watching Merrion punch numbers on the phone while Janet snored efficiently by the window, "I can't believe she'd do that. She could've done that to him. I never saw a side of her that'd make me think she'd do an awful thing like that, just go and kill a man. Never in a million years."

  "I know it," Merrion said, hearing the phone begin to ring at the police station. "I'm the same way too. I can never believe it either.

  As many times I've seen it happen, I still can't make myself believe it. They always tell you, every time, they promise you, that they will be good boys and girls. And then something like this happens. It shakes your faith in human nature… Hello? Yeah, Amby Merrion. Got a homicide to report. No, I'm not a cop, I'm the clerk of court. Yeah that's me, I am the guy: I know everything."

  TWENTY-SIX

  At 1:45 on the afternoon of the second Friday in November, US District Court Judge Barrie Foote stood up scowling at the end of the table in the library of her chambers. She wadded the bag containing the debris of her lunch and threw it overhand, hard, at the wastebasket in the corner, clanking it off the near edge. "Bummer," she said, 'shit." She walked over to the corner, picked it up and threw it down hard into the basket. Then she returned to the head of the table, sat down and pushed the buzzer on her phone, saying: "Tell Sandy to send in the clowns."

  She was refolding her New York Times when she heard Sandy Robey, talking to someone behind him, open the outer door and come through her office into the library. Geoffrey Cohen, Arnold Bissell and Merrion followed. The judge cast the paper aside and
stood up. "Gentlemen," she said.

  "Lizzie'll be right along with her machine, Judge," Robey said. "I assume you want this on the record." He took his usual chair at the opposite end of the table, near the door.

  "Oh, by all means on the record," the judge said. "If you'll all be seated gentlemen, we'll be able to get underway on whatever it is we're doing here I'm not entirely clear on it myself, so you'll have to enlighten me as soon as she arrives. I'd suggest you, Geoff, here on my left, and your client, next to you. I'm assuming he's Mister Merrion."

  "That's correct, your Honor," Cohen said. He wore grey flannel trousers, a heather-blue Harris tweed two-button jacket, a blue button-down shirt and a pine-patterned dark blue silk tie. His brown van Dyke was faultlessly groomed.

  "Mister Merrion," the judge said.

  "Afternoon, your Honor," Merrion said, neutrally. He wore a dark blue blazer, grey flannel slacks, a grey shirt and a tie that Cohen had affably described as 'hideous," red, with gold triangles interlocked kaleidoscopic ally His face was taut and although he had nothing in his hands he moved gingerly, as though carrying a possibly explosive parcel.

  "And you, Arnie, here, on my right," the judge said.

  Elizabeth Gibson, a stocky black woman in her forties in a tight brownish-grey striped suit with a brown sueded collar, her greying hair bunned tightly back, stomped into the room on her two short heavy legs carrying her stenotype machine by the chrome standard connecting it to stubby tripod legs. She set it down next to Bissell, sat and began to type.