George Higgins - A change of gravity

"And then we open up the car doors there and we get them unloaded, and march 'em right into the bookin' desk-area there, and advise 'em and mug 'em and print 'em. And from there they go right into the cell.

Then there they have been at all times since we pulled them out the cruiser: inside of the building, in the lock-up. So they haven't had another look at being outdoors again since they got arrested, because they've never been outdoors again once they got put in the car, the official vehicle there. And they wont be outside again until they've been bailed and discharged and allowed to go free, on their way, with the date set for them to be in court. So once you've done that, see, put the reception area physically inside of the building like I said, you have now just practically eliminated here that completely human tendency and temptation they all always have now, to try to get away and escape, and with all that that entails there, and that's a completely essential thing, I think here, myself."

Shortly after 9:30 that Saturday evening in August Merrion's beeper went off while he sat cramped in a wicker chair too small for him in the now-glass-enclosed sunporch of the house in Canterbury where he had grown up, watching a taped rerun of final night of a big dog-show that had taken place six months or so earlier in Madison Square Garden in New York, trying idly once more to think of some way he could have a dog again without complicating his life beyond endurance, knowing that there was none. The number that came up on the beeper screen in faint light-emitting-diode grey was for the administrative line at the Canterbury police station. He lifted the wireless remote telephone handset from the wicker table next to his chair and punched the number in, and when he recognized the answering voice he said: "Hiya, Everett, what we got?" He listened and then he said: "My, my, that's unusual.

How many involved here?"

Once more he listened and then said: "Okay, I guess I'd better come down then. Gimme fifteen minutes. Oh, and better give Social Services a call. They may wanna take a hand in this. On second thought, no, make it half an hour. I've got the Westchester Kennel Club show on and we're judging the collies here now. I wanna wait and see who's gets the Best Bitch." He laughed. "Yeah, if it was the courthouse, it'd be no contest at all. Biggest Bitch, anyway-Joanie in Probation, win that one hands-down. Anyway, just tell 'em I'm putting my pants on and they keep their shirts on and I'm on my way; I'll be there, half an hour.

Have 'em get their money ready, and if they haven't got any, tell 'em they better either use their call to get someone who's got cash to spare, or else make friends fast with somebody else in the cell-block who's got some. "Cause this clerk makes no exceptions; otherwise it's Sunday in the slammer." He paused. "Yeah, see you at Sal's motor entrance in about a half an hour."

He hung up grateful for the call. He had hoped for it. He intended to be generous when he rotated the weekend bail-setting watch (required when the court would not sit the next day because by law no one could be held more than twenty-four hours without bail having been set) among his three assistant clerks. He told them he meant it when he said that it was only because he was being a nice guy that he was offering them the option. He said that if they chose to tie themselves down one or two weekend nights in order to augment their statutory salaries with the magistrate's bail-setting fee of $25 in each case, that would be fine with him. On the other hand, any time that it happened that all three of them preferred to have both weekend evenings free, and forgo the extra money, that would also be all right.

He had a reason. Richie Hammond had hogged the detail, seldom permitting Merrion or the second and third assistant clerks, Bobby Cooke and Jeanne Flagg, to share the extra money. That had led to some resentment and hard feelings which in turn explained why it was Richie had so much trouble finding anyone who'd pinch-hit for him when he wanted to spend an occasional weekend away. Merrion wanted no such dissension. "And besides," as he told Hilliard, "I'm single, and with what Larry left me, I don't need the fuckin' money. I just put it in my pocket until I get to the bank, put it into my account I'm saving up for when I have to buy my next car. Keep a record every dime, fuckin'

IRS thinks they're gonna grab me puttin' cash into my pocket without payin' taxes on it, they can go and think again. That's the first place that the bastards look. I'd be stupid if I did that, and I'd be just as stupid, too, I didn't, let the kids take what they want."

The weekend totals varied with the seasons. There were almost always at least four or five unlucky drivers whose dead headlights, faulty brake-lights or imperfect recognition of passing zones or stop signs justified a roving cop's decision to pull them over and require them to show their licenses and registrations, leading to arrests for suspended or missing documents, or operating under the influence of alcohol or narcotics. Documentation of their releases on personal recognizance in the amount of $100, promises of payment that would come due if they failed to appear the next day court was open to be processed and enter pleas, would yield a total of at least a hundred bucks a night. More often than not a Friday evening would produce an angrily baffled male whose frustrating week at work or out of it had convinced him that the only cure for his malaise was more beer than his ordinarily peaceful disposition could tolerate without becoming profane and noisy, frightening his wife into believing that violence would be next and causing her to call the cops. That would add another twenty-five dollars to the magistrate's net pay. Sometimes around graduation time or during the football season the State cops would break up an off-campus keg-party at a summer cottage on one of the lakes or a skinny-dipping outing at the reservoir, bagging a small herd of underage drinkers and public urinators whose releases from the lock-up in Hampton Pond would bring two or three hundred dollars. In the late Eighties the increasing traffic in crack cocaine had spawned an increase as well in the number of magistrate's fees, arrests for dealing it adding fifty to a hundred dollars a night.

It seemed to Merrion that that kind of money ought to be hard for a young parent to turn down, but surprisingly more often than he would have thought, both of the two young fathers and the young wife on his staff as well regularly passed it up, saying they wanted time with their families. And during the summer the absences of vacationing assistants usually put him on duty at least one night every week.

This night he was glad of it. On the way home from visiting his mother he had perceived himself to be in a familiar, dangerously barren mood.

Polly had not recognized him, gazing into space and glancing at him only when it registered on her that there was something else alive and breathing in her room, the evidence being bright and cheerful sounds he made when he tried to talk to her. At least she hadn't mistaken him for Chris, which still occasionally happened 'and never fails to piss me off," as he told Hilliard. "Puts me right into a fuckin' rage, even though of course I know she's got no idea what she's saying. I dunno what I want from her, expect her to do, where that no-good bastard's concerned. Fifty, sixty miles away, maybe an hour's drive? If it's even that, and he hasn't been to see her since I can't remember when.

Before she got really sick, I know, the bastard, been at least that long.

"I can't figure the little shit out. It's almost as though he holds me and her responsible for Dad dying like he did when he was still so young. Like he got gypped out of something or something, and we helped whoever did it. When he had much more of Dad's tim en I ever did because by the time he came along Dad'd made sales manager and didn't have to work so many hours had more time to take Chris to ballgames and places by then I was too old to go with them. And who the hell does he think helped Ma pay his tuition, he went to Cathedral? Helped out with his living expenses or he couldn't've gone to BU like he did, even if with his scholarship. That all seems to've slipped his mind now. She still remembers his name, though. It's my name she always forgets.