George Higgins - A change of gravity

That fact had not been lost on Mary Pat. Heedlessly leaving her desk at mid-morning as soon as she'd heard the news, putting off the explanation to another day no one in her office ever asked her for it later she had gone at once to his place to make stiff drinks and get in bed to give him a lover's help. She had arrived there knowing she thought: instinctively, without possibility of error he needed to have that done. It had always seemed to him afterwards that both of them had realized about ten seconds before she'd really begun trying to console him, it was never going to work.

Neither one of them had ever gotten over it. After a few more perfunctory, good-buddy, make-believe tries at making him feel better she'd decided on her own to give it up. While in one corner of his mind he believed she'd never found it getting any easier to do, she'd started saying No without excuse or explanation every time he called, and she had stuck to it. After a while he'd given up too, and rather gratefully stopped making the calls.

That August Saturday waiting for Hilliard at Grey Hills the most recent time he'd seen her had been by chance at a dinner-dance at the Sheraton Hartford hotel in '92 or '93, benefit for the family of a high-spirited, hail-fellow lawyer they had known from Seventies-early-Eighties New England Democratic politics. Disbarred and disgraced after having lived very graciously for many years on money he had not, after all, earned from representing a few extremely wealthy and secretive clients, as he had always seemed to claim.

Instead he had stolen systematically and routinely from a couple dozen estates left by fairly prosperous clients whose heirs had trusted him, taking what he'd wanted as boldly as if it had been his. Caught, he had avoided criminal prosecution, certain conviction and plenty of jail by stripping his own estate as ruthlessly as he'd plundered his late clients' accumulations. The sale of everything he owned at distress prices, beggaring his still-young family, combined with the proceeds of his malpractice insurance policy amounted to enough to constitute ostentatious restitution of eighty-four percent of what he had stolen. He was sentenced to five years in jail, two of them to be served, three suspended for ten years.

Granted thirty days to finish putting his affairs in order before starting to serve his sentence, he had needed only two to complete his liquidation by shooting himself in the head.

"Well, no one ever said Mickey wasn't thorough," Mary Pat said, encountering Merrion at the bar. She still smoked the Winstons and weighed around the same trim one-fifteen, but she was dressing and decorating it a lot better. Merrion told her she looked like a million bucks. "Yeah," she said, satisfaction in that smoky voice, 'and even nicer, now I've got it."

"Hit the lottery?" he said. "Lucky you."

She grinned and shook her head. "Can't count on luck," she said.

"Luck's not dependable, and as you know, mine's never been all that good. Stock market's much more reliable. Skill and smarts still count there, which is good. Helps if you clank when you walk, but it's really not all that complicated. You quit spending all your time partying around; start staying home and paying attention to what the rich people say."

"You have rich friends now?" Merrion said.

"Well," she said, "I have a rich friend. He takes me where rich people go; I get close enough to listen."

He hadn't asked her the next question because he'd known the answer.

She'd delivered it anyway, shaking her head. He played dumb, smiled back and said: "I'm missing something here, am I?"

She'd shaken her head once more. "Probably nothing that ever really interested you that much," she said. "Funny how things seem to change, after time's gone by."

"What is it that seems to have changed on us here, all of a sudden and all?" Merrion said to Hilliard on the terrace at Grey Hills, that Saturday in August.

Hilliard frowned and leaned forward in his chair. He rested his elbows on its arms and scraped it on the flagstones up against the table. "I think," he said slowly, frowning, '1 think… well, lemme put it this way: what I think is, anyway… I…"

"Well, this is reassuring," Merrion said. "If you're doing that."

"You had some doubt in your mind, maybe?" Hilliard said, looking up from under his eyebrows.

"I was beginning to get a little concerned, yeah," Merrion said. "I was beginning to wonder if maybe instead of asking you to explain Julian to me, I should ask Julian about you. Or maybe get Janet back in and put a different question to her. "What's the meaning of life, huh Janet? You got a handle on this?"

"Yeah," Hilliard said. "Well, look, whyn't we do this now, then, all right? Let's you and me just go inside and get a bite to eat, cheeseburger, something, a bottle of beer, talk it over in there, and see what we do about this. Would that be all right with you? Then, after that, play a round. Or maybe just nine holes or something."

"Fuck going inside," Merrion said. "Tell me here what you think's going on."

"I don't know," Hilliard said. "I heard things I don't like, but I'm not sure… Look, you gotta remember Bob Pooler."

"Remember and hate the fucker," Merrion said.

"Yeah, well, still," Hilliard said. "I think you should go, you know, talk to the guy, and see what he thinks about this. See what he's got to say."

"Hear what the little prick's got to say about what?" Merrion said.

"What could that little shit possibly have to say that could possibly interest me?"

"Well," Hilliard said slowly, "I'm not exactly sure myself yet what the broad outlines of this might be, but what it seems to be is this: he thinks they may be thinking, the federal boys in Boston, about maybe starting up grand jury hearings out this way, down in Springfield, I mean, and if they decide to do that then they might be… well, you know what I'm saying, right? Might be coming after me."

"Which of course would have to mean, then," Merrion said thoughtfully, 'also after me."

Hilliard frowned and cleared his throat, "Yeah," he said. "Well, after us. That would be the gist of it. After you and me."

The police station in Canterbury was the second-largest structure to be built in the new municipal complex, four buildings clustered on Holyoke Street a block north of the green. The town offices opened in 1981.

The police station was completed in February of 1982. The largest building, the new fire station, and the public library were finished in April of 1983, during Hilliard's eleventh and last term in the House.

Because he had been instrumental in the enactment of 1980 legislation granting $6.7 million in state aid to the town for the construction, the selectmen felt they had no choice but to invite him to be the keynote speaker at the dedication of the buildings as the Veterans'

Memorial Municipal Center on the afternoon of Memorial Day of 1983.

It was not a popular decision. Many who had voted for him several times now severely disapproved of him and said they would never support him again, generating considerable and vehement negative advance comment. He thought he heard someone boo when he took the lectern, but he soon made his audience feel better, using the occasion to announce to the audience of sixty-three seated on metal folding chairs before him on the broad front walk that he would not be a candidate for re-election in 1984Several women applauded vigorously, nodding for emphasis, saying "Good," and "Well, you shouldn't," giving their husbands meaningful looks; one or two even cried "Yea," in ladylike fashion.

He declined to divulge his plans. "You do," Merrion said, 'and all you do is egg them on, whet their appetites. All they want is to see you humiliated, punished for the way you treated Mercy.