George Higgins - A change of gravity

"And Tyrone, Tyrone he just look at me and shake his head, and he be laffin' at me? He do, and then he say to me: "You really something', Amby, yes, you really, truly are." Then he clapped me on the back and said: "But you can put your mind at ease here, because everything is cool. Nothin' to concern yourself, not a thing at all. Everyone was very nice. Everything is cool."

"I am never sure whether Tyrone's playin' straight with me or givin' me the leg, and I will admit that. He's been workin' for me in the same office with me for several years and they have been happy years. I think we like each other fine. But every now and then I get the feeling that my friend Tyrone may be funnin' with me some, you know?

Just a little bit; keep his hand in and all, givin' me the leg when I think he's bein' straight."

Tyrone Thomas, thirty-eight, formerly of Cambridge, had become the third assistant clerk of the Canterbury District Court when Merrion had plucked him out of the lower third of the civil service list and appointed him in 1989 at the suggestion of State Sen. William Gallagher of Hingham, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight. Merrion did not know or have any occasion to speak to Gallagher. Gallagher had never laid eyes on Thomas. Gallagher's suggestion had been relayed to Merrion by Dan Hilliard, president of Hampton Pond Community College.

Hilliard's request for a special supplemental appropriation of $3.9 million to finance construction of a new HPCC building incorporating a student union and computer center along with 'much-needed faculty offices and expanded vocational counseling facilities' was short one vote for inclusion in the consensus budget under review by the Senate Committee on Ways and Means. Sen. Tobias Green of Boston controlled that vote.

"I can't budge him, Dan," Gallagher told Hilhard. "You know I love you dearly and I want you to have your game room and your bar-and-grill and pool hall, jai-alai court and rumpus room. Everything you say you've got to have or else the students starved for knowledge'll burn down the entire campus and put you out of work. But Green's the swing-vote, and he's not gonna budge until he gets what he wants, which is a court clerkship for this Thomas kid. Not later; right now. Green has checked and he knows there's one open out at your end of the world, in Canterbury. If it's promised to someone else and you can't pry it loose, that's all right. At least it's all right with me. It wont be all right with Tobias; he'll call you a racist and say now he knows you're in the Klan. He thinks that, you don't get your building."

Hilhard said he'd make the call and get back to Gallagher. Mernon said to Hilhard: "Good. Send that darky out here on the next stage. This's the best news I've had since my no-good fucking brother Chris swore to me for I think it was the fourth time that he'll never speak to me again. This time I think he means it. Now you come along and tell me that this means that fucking vacancy more like an open sore is finally going to be filled.

"My Christian heart is filled with joy. Now I know Larry was telling the truth when he said he was happy when I got the job. He told me when Chassy Spring he was appointing me, 'cause you had hammered Chassy, he'd never been so damned relieved in all of his born days.

"You getting it meant I was free. Free of all the nagging bastards who been after that damned job. "Sorry," I could then tell them, "Dan Hilhard's man's the winner. You gotta beef, it's with him. I can't help you one bit."

"I didn't believe him then, but now I do, I do. It's the exact same thing with me. Now I can finally tell the late Richie Hammond's favorite nephew and also the late Larry Lane's grandson that the fucking job is filled and they are out of fucking luck, "So stop pestering me and beat it."

"The Lane grandson especially. His mother came from miles away she was in Japan, the time to help boot Grampa Larry out of his own house and make him go somewhere else to die. But her kid is delicate; he told me he suffers from chronic depression and can't leave his bedroom about ninety-eight days a year. I told him this makes it hard for me and Lennie Cavanaugh to see how he could possibly hold down a job in the courthouse. I told him having to go to the courthouse every day makes even perfectly normal and stable people like me, haven't got a thing wrong with them, feel pretty depressed quite a lot.

"He thinks that shouldn't matter. He thinks the fact his gallant unsung dad singlehandedly resolved some trade dispute with Taiwan should make everything all right for him, always, in perpetuity. In other words, what I think doesn't matter. He wants the job and therefore I should give it to him.

"Now I can tell him he's probably right, but I can't do it for him.

And: "If you're down in Hell hstenin', Larry, understand that this one's for you." I can tell the same thing to the Hammond kid, too, who obviously doesn't know his late Uncle Richie hated me and did everything he could think of to fuck me over, or what warm feelings I still have for the bastard. "And Larry, if you're still kstenin', if you should run into Richie down there, tell him this one's also for me."

"I will say to those two fresh kids: "Hate to tell you this, guys, but the both of you seem to've lost out. To a nigger, can you beat it?

Hey, it's Affirmative Action what can I tell you? I've been neutered, made to sing soprano and rendered powerless, also my hands have been tied. But I want you to know, I'll always have you in my heart."

"Same for the other four hundred and thirty-two people who've also let it be known that they'd like the job. Not a bunch of fireballs; most of them look to me like they need their rest and generally manage to get it. I will tell them you got me in a hammerlock, ignored my piteous cries, and ordered me like the Nazi you are to give it to this fine young gentleman of color. So now they can stop calling me and start calling you day and night to threaten you with death for giving it to Amos. Or was it Andy you just said? Whichever, doesn't matter;

I can't wait 'til he gets here."

Senator Green until his entry into politics in 1981 had for several years taught social studies and coached the jay vee football and basketball teams at Cambridge Ridge and Latin High School, where he had encountered Tyrone Thomas. Thomas had been the youngest son of a single mother whose two elder boys, by different footloose fathers, had both been in trouble with the law before apparently getting themselves straightened out as US Army volunteers. Tyrone had not been a standout as student or athlete, but he was a genuinely nice kid, and he had become one of Green's favorites, using his average intelligence as diligently in the classroom as he did his body and his average skills when playing sports, cheerfully doing what Green, his mentor and after a while his surrogate father told him to do. He earned a B+ average and varsity letters as a second-stringer in football, basketball and track, and received a need-based scholarship from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.

Correctly assessing as poor his prospects of even a brief career in professional sports, and believing that the practices and games took too much time away from his studies, Thomas dropped football midway through his first season and basketball after his sophomore year at the Cross, slightly disappointing one of the basketball coaches who had hoped he might develop into a capable substitute small forward, but gratifying Green. Green said Thomas's decision was a mature judgment, confirmed by his subsequent graduation with a 2.7 grade-point low B average in sociology, and his subsequent admission to the New England School of Law in Boston.

Thomas earned his J.D. while partially supporting himself and two children his wife, Carol, also worked, as a $17,000-a-year clerk-typist in the State Department of Revenue as a $24,000-a-year assistant manager of the Great American Inn motel on Fresh Pond Parkway in Arlington. When he graduated he had firm assurances from GAI upper management that his record in Arlington coupled with his college and law degrees put him on the fast track for early promotion to the national executive offices in Alexandria. He was flattered and inclined to stay with the company.