George Higgins - A change of gravity

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 about 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.

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.

Andy gets that idea, he's liable, cut out Lennie entirely. Can't have that happening'.

"Although my guess is it already did. The uncle made a good part his bundle selling used cars, for Christ sake. You know he had to've seen right through Lennie. Probably tickled him. No matter where the Red Sox moved their training camp Sarasota, Winter Haven, now Fort Myers Lennie always got to Clearwater, where Andy lives. "I always make it a point to spend a few days with him, long's I'm in the area." There was one stretch when the Sox trained in Arizona, Scottsdale, I think it was, so that's where Lennie took Julia on their winter trip. But they still got to Clearwater to visit his uncle. I guess Clearwater was in the Arizona area those years.

"The rest of the year he's callin' every week at least, listenin' for wheezin', any shortness of breath, hopin' maybe to hear about a few chest pains; wishin' there's a way to take his pulse and get a urine sample by phone, fifteen hundred miles away. For years he's been doin' this, and all the time he's thinkin': "How much longer can he last?