George Higgins - A change of gravity

Because if Sam ever had allowed himself to catch on to what they were doing to him, meanly making fun of him, making a fool of him, that would triple or quadruple the pain they had inflicted on him just for fun. He still would've had to act as though he still didn't know it was going on, made himself act as though it never really happened.

Because after he got through talking with them and forming his impressions, it was going to be his job to write factual, unbiased reports about them. As he construed it that required never letting his personal feelings influence his judgement of a man, have any bearing, one way or the other, on what he recommended.

"That's my job, part of my job that I'm supposed to do. What I might think of some one particular guy personally; whether I like him or not: never letting that interfere or get in the way, in any way, of what I write down in my reports. What goes in there is what I think of him as a man who's on parole or on probation he's given his word, after all; he's on a trial; he's not free; he's just been let loose to see if he can, and will, behave, if and when he is fully released. What kind of use I think he's making of this second chance he's getting or this third or fourth or fifth chance, if that's what it is. If we're all gonna get another chance, after we die, to earn our way in Purgatory up into heaven, like it says in the Bible, then it seems to me that we oughta have something like that for down here. If there's gonna be redemption for us after we're dead, for what we may've done while we were down here, then by rights there oughta be some kind of redemption available on earth.

"And if there's going to be that, well then, getting it shouldn't depend on if I like you or not. What it should depend on is whether I think you've earned it, and deserve it, even if I do think you're not a guy I'd like to see a ballgame with: whether I like you's got nothing to do with whether I think you're doing OK. That's what I'm supposed to write down, whether you're doing OK And that's all that I therefore write down." Because he was a US Department of Justice Probation Services Officer, and that had to mean something, didn't it? Or else what did anything mean?

He had told Merrion enough about the genesis of the nickname to enable him to deduce the rest himself. Soon after the beginning of his thirty-four years with the Service, his clients (Merrion seldom heard him refer to them as 'cases') had begun to call him "Sammy Paradise."

When they reported by phone or came to the office, they asked for him by that name.

"I assumed it must've seemed just as unsuitable for him as a younger man as it did when I ran into him and he was middle-aged," Merrion told Cavanaugh. "So naturally it therefore wasn't very long before the filing clerks and secretaries in the office where he worked, and then all other people that he worked with, his colleagues and superiors, began using it as well. It was a joke. When someone pins a nickname on a person that's so completely inappropriate for him you can't help but kind of laugh a little, snicker, every time you hear it laugh at him, I mean, not with him, just out of general high spirits it's guaranteed to stick. I think most of us must be cruel, enjoy hurting other people. Most human beings are generously cruel.

"Sammy being Sam, though, he doesn't seem to mind. I mean, as far as anyone could tell. I've never called him that myself, Sammy Paradise, when he was around, but the other guys I've met him with not his clients, now, his hoods; these're people in his office they use it around him all the time. Apparently he's never objected. They treat him like shit, do they? It's okay; he doesn't mind.

"One day when he didn't show for lunch I called there, find out where he was. That's when the whole thing first struck me, the way they treat the guy. He'd called in sick, the flu. But the asshole secretary that he talked to, someone that he works with, every day, he asked her specifically to call me? She never bothered.

"I was curious, you know? I asked her why. "Well then, if he asked you to do this, and you work for him, why didn't you do it then? Save me a useless trip to the place where he's supposed to be, like he wanted you to do, knowing he was sick and wasn't gonna make it." And she said: "I dunno. I had something else I hadda do, I guess. I must've forgot."

"I get this stupid broad any time I call up over there and ask for him by name, "Samuel Paradisic" She's the receptionist and she's also assigned to him, to type up his reports. She's the Sammy secretary.

When you ask for him she acts like she met him once a few months ago and he didn't impress her much. I say I want to talk to him and she always says to me: "Oh you must mean Sammy Paradise. I'm not sure he's in today." When I know he's in, because I just had to tell him I'd call him back after he called me and I had someone in my office.

"One day it got to me, this broad's attitude, and I asked to talk to Sammy's boss. Guy named Anglin, think his name was, seemed like a nice-enough guy. I told him how this typist of theirs acts when I call, and said if she treats me that way she's most likely rude to everybody else. How when I ask for Sam she refers to him as "Sammy Paradise," not "Mister Paradisio," which, I said, can't cause his clients to respect him a lot, much less the general public. And I asked Anglin did he think that was right. He told me Sam'd never objected which kind of surprised me; it seemed so completely out of keeping with everything else about him. Disrespectful of his dignity or something. And unless he complained about it, Anglin said he didn't see any need to do anything about it. I got the impression I'm the only one who ever griped about that lazy broad, who wont even look around for a guy she works for when someone calls and asks for him. In fact, from the reaction I got to the question over there, it was pretty obvious his boss thought maybe I was some kind of a nut. Either that or out of line."

"Well," Paradisio said, getting to know Cavanaugh by allowing Cavanaugh to learn what he was like, enabling the judge to evaluate him as though tacitly conceding that the judge outranked him and had a right to size him up, at the same time ate his Italian sub, talking while he chewed.

"Bad enough, when my clients try to do that, get on my good side, as though some day that might get them a break when they really don't deserve one. Wishful thinking but that I can understand.

"But every so often, just now and then, I get one that goes beyond that, acting like we're pals. I'm now his big brother, or sometimes maybe even his father. Finds out when my birthday is, sends me cards and shit.

"None of them've got any imagination. It's like they're followin' a cookbook. You can almost see 'em, movin' their lips. Here's this repeat-offender, career criminal, moanin' and groanin': he's all alone in the world. He was inside so long he hasn't got nobody left and no place to go. Nobody cares about him. The boo and the hoo and "poor me." So maybe this year you could ask your wife if she would make a little extra stuffing and set one more platen usual for Thanksgiving?

He'd like to spend the day with you, you're the closest thing to family he's got left, and he's not supposed to see his old friends any more, he used to hang around with, who got him in trouble. As you know; you're the boss now and you're the one who told him that. And you know he wants to do everything exactly how you say, 'cause he's reformed now and he's going to be good.

"He's working on you. Gradually it's all becoming your fault, you're to blame, that the holidays're comin' and he's all alone. He didn't have nothin' to do with it, or pretty soon he wont've, by the time that he gets through rewriting history around you. This's the pattern with almost all of them. All the bad things you thought he did were somebody else's doing. He'll get so he believes the shit while he's slingin' it; just give him some time and he will. It wont be anything he did that explains why his family disowned him, and he was inside for so long no one remembers his name or that he lost track of all of his respectable friends. Always what someone else did. That's his way of dealing with the emptiness: fill it up with lies.