George Higgins - A change of gravity

Get your mind clear on this: If you violate the terms of your release, and I find out, as soon as we catch up with you you're goin' away again. And nothin's gonna change that."

He wore, as usual, a frayed and starched long-collared broadcloth shirt that had taken on a greyish cast, frayed at the cuffs and collar, and one of what must have been a large collection of flimsy neckties, modestly patterned and shy, that made tiny knots when tied.

Merrion found them embarrassing. To Hilliard: "I hate those neckties of his. They're offensive. It's so hard to remember what they even look like, five minutes after you've left him. Almost like he's daring you, you know? He's gonna call you up later and test you. "See? I knew it: You don't remember what color tie I've got on. That's how much attention you pay me." The only other time you see ties like his is when you're in a Filene's Basement or some charity thrift shop and they're hanging up in bunches, wooden pegs. They should stay there. He buys his pants out of catalogues and they come with Ban-roll waistbands I don't know that but I'd bet."

In cold weather Paradisio wore tweed sport coats that lacked heft, and in warm seasons he wore shapeless hop sack blazers. "His sports coats look like there's nobody in them, when he's got them on. He looks like he gets dressed inna morning hoping no one'll notice him all day. Even see him; like his ambition's to become transparent. His haircuts make him look like that's what he wants. Boys' regular, short back and sides. He's been going to Harding's ever since his father started going there in Nineteen-fifty-one. He may've never liked the way Russ Harding cuts his hair, but that wouldn't make any difference. He wouldn't have it in him to change barbers over such a little thing as not liking how the guy cut his hair.

"Not that I don't really like him or respect the guy at all; I do. He's the nicest guy the world. It's just that he's perfect. He looks like he is what he actually is and most likely always was, even before he officially became one a conscientious government worker. You look at him and you just know it. Everything about the guy screams Government at you."

He had gotten his nickname in the course of his government work. His job had obliged him to start 'keeping exactly the kind of company,"

Merrion said, 'that you'd imagine a guy named "Sammy Paradise" getting' into on his own, water seekin' lower ground: Hangin' around with the gangsters. Only I would've thought they'd be other gangsters; his colleagues.

"I tell you, it's wonderful. Among hundreds of things that Sammy is not, Sammy isn't a gangster. He's in the world to do good, and nothing wrong with that notion. You and I, that's what we try to do. Don't always succeed, but we try. We're just not as ambitious. Sammy's faith in his fellow man's far greater'n ours: He tries to do good with the hoods.

"This is a very big difference. Knowin' what they are, knowin' that they'll never change, most of the time he can still manage to believe that they might reform. That's Sammy's natural mission. He knows his work is hopeless, but he also knows that if he ever lets himself think that, he wont be able to do it anymore. Somehow he convinces himself he doesn't know what he knows."

For Paradisio it was essential to persuade himself he didn't know what his clients meant when they told him that with his help they now understood where they had gone wrong. They told him they had come to see that the way that they'd been living before they had gotten caught was what had made them move so fast and make mistakes. "They hadn't taken time enough to think the whole thing out. Quickness's what's really counted in the acts that got them into trouble. It's surprising how big a part that plays in what they have to say to me, about the lives they've lived."

From listening to them for so many years he believed he had learned to think a little bit like they did. "Which can be very helpful,"

Paradisio told Cavanaugh. "I'm not knocking it. They often tell me if they'd only taken time enough to stop and think, about whatever got them into the shit, well, they never would've done it.

"They've just never had the time. It's the darnedest thing. It always seems to have been they had to act, right off, before every guy named Dave and Al, and everybody else as well, found out and started trying, pull the deal off before they could. So things never turned out quite the way that they hoped, and then look what'd happened. I hear those stories all the time, day in and day out. That's how I've spent my life at work, listening to desperate men convicted and then severely punished for very serious crimes tell me the reason was timing. They've had a lot of time to compose their stories. You'd expect that they'd be good, complete, with no loose ends. But they aren't. They always lack something: any admission or recognition that if Dave and Al had in fact managed to go for the loot first, they would've been just as guilty of committing serious crimes, and if caught then convicted and put in jail. The parolees I deal with in that one respect're a lot like the people I work for and with: they all seem to think that what matters is how good a job you do, not whether you should do the job.

Except of course that the people I work for don't usually do felonies.

The jobs they pull off may not always be good things to do, but most of the time they are legal."

He paused. "I no longer point out to my felons what is missing from their stories. I used to but I gave it up, many years ago. They claimed they didn't understand why the element I mentioned was important to fully understanding what was wrong with what they did. I could not convince them that it was. The smarter ones after a while saw that I wouldn't let them off the hook until I'd made them see the matter my way, so they claimed I'd convinced them. They were lying. I saw that they were never gonna stop lying. So I gave up creating the situations they dealt with by telling me lies I didn't believe. I guess we're partners now."

He was right. The strategy he'd devised to avoid disbelief of what they said amounted to comp licit surrender in their deceit. If he didn't raise the question of repentance, they wouldn't lie to him. "No one's on parole or probation forever. Sooner or later they either die or we have to release them. The agency can't get much bigger. Process them through, regardless of what they've become. Go along, get along, and go home."

He was resigned to the collaboration. "With a name like Paradisio, everybody thinks that anyway, you're in the bag with these guys. "Ah, this guy's probably mobbed-up. Fuckin' ghinnies; most of'em are."

He was not alleging prejudice. As far as he knew he had never been held back from advancement by suspicion that he might be connected, closer to the men that he was supposed to be supervising than he was letting on, concealing stronger loyalties to them than to the government and the department he was working for. He had found the job to be as it was supposed to be at the time he took it. His nickname was just an insignificant aspect of the acceptable prize that he had wanted, and gotten out of his life: a good steady job for himself and his family, Lois and the kids.

Civil Service: that was the kind of job that he'd wanted, the definition of steady. He went into Probation because Probation had openings when he dropped out of American International College in Springfield, for the usual three reasons: no money; no great interest in finishing; and lastly, no reason at all. "I could've dug up the money, I guess, I'd've put my mind to it. Really wanted to try. And the same with the grades. I didn't have to get Cs and Ds; I'm not stupid. But what the hell, I didn't want to, I guess was the main reason. I was young. What the hell do you know when you're young?