George Higgins - A change of gravity

Whalen evidently wasn't interested in discussing the ravages of age; he said nothing. "But anyway, the green's uphill, and not only that but it's tiered, and the upshot of it anyway's we both take fuckin' sevens.

The tenth hole's beat us again.

"But that's all right. I'm still okay, still up by the four. But not for long. We're swappin' strokes alia way to fifteen. Wolf River runs along the left there; you got a hook like I do, you got that to think about. Which I of course do, think about it, and like I said, that's not a good thing to do. So as usual Danny tucks it to me. Par four, three-fifty-nine, and what do I take? A nine, a big fat nine. Splashed one, of course, so busy tryin' not to do that that I naturally do it two strokes right there. And then got inna bunker; for good measure; dub my wedge 'fore I can get out. And then after I'm out, what do I do? Over the green and into the opposite sand trap One beach is nice, try the other.

"And what's Danny doing, I am having all this fun? He's parring the thing, naturally, like he pretty nearly always does. He's got the Indian sign, some kind of hex thing on that fifteen hole. He owns it.

I don't know why that should be; it just is. Always been that way, too."

Whalen shifted his weight from his right foot to his left and moved his upper body away from the wall. Merrion hoped that indicated he was growing restless. "But then anyway, there we both are, playin' sixteen, even again like we started. We got three holes left.

Theoretically I should be able, get a stroke or two of my lead back.

Right. Both of us bogey the sixteenth, which I have had days, I could play that. This just didn't happen to be one of them. But then it all becomes academic, because I double-bogey the seventeenth and he comes away with a bogey. Danny's the one who picks up the stroke, and that'll be it for the day. The last one, the eighteenth we both take a seven. He ends up, he beats me by one. So it's me payin' him twenty bucks."

Whalen stood and looked at Merrion as though he had been led to expect that Merrion had an act that would entertain him, and while he had enjoyed what he had seen up to that point, he wasn't sure whether there might still be some more to come. Not wishing to offend Merrion by seeming to presume the performance was over, he would therefore wait quietly until he got some kind of signal. He did not say anything.

"So I would say: Yeah, Danny looked all right to me," Merrion said, moistening his lips. "Looked okay to me there, at least, he was taking my money. Of course his busy season's comin' up here pretty soon, all the kids come back and so forth. So he's got that on his mind. Gettin' ready for the fall. But he's used to that, of course. That's a normal thing for him; happens every year."

"Because I did hear," Whalen said, now apparently satisfied Merrion had finished his presentation, "I heard things maybe might not be, you know, goin' so good for him. And I figured if that was the case, well, you know him. You would know. But you didn't hear nothin', I guess?

You didn't hear nothin' like that?"

"I don't, ah, follow," Merrion said, feeling sudden tightness cramp his chest and thinking if it was a heart attack it would just have to wait; the business at hand was not to panic. He decided it would get him time and seem appropriate to frown and look mildly concerned. "What kind of things, exactly?"

Whalen dropped his hands, hunched his shoulders, shrugged, purged his face of expression, refolded his arms and leaned his right shoulder back against the cinderblock. "I dunno," he said. "I dunno what it was. You know how it is, you hear something. Don't always pay that good attention, when somebody's sayin' it. Then later on you see someone, maybe see somebody else, and that reminds you of it, you know?"

Merrion cleared his throat and said "Gee," but to his enormous relief Whalen seemed to believe they had had enough conversation and to expect no answer. He turned his head slightly away from the wall and turned it back over his left shoulder, contorting his face so that when he raised his voice instead of actually yelling down the hall behind him he was hollering at the pocked surface of the opposite wall. "Hey Thompson, for Christ sake, hell's holdin' you up? Got Mister Merrion sittin' around here like he's got nothin' better to do. I got him down here 'cause you told me you got work for him. Now you got him coolin' his heels. Get the lead out, willya Christ sakes? Move things along for a change." Then he looked at Merrion and grinned.

Shortly after 1:30 A.M.

Memon emerged into the parking lot behind the Canterbury Police Station, richer by $350 in bail fees but feeling no satisfaction. He was burdened in his spirit by grim inferences he drew from Whalen's ominous inquiries. The night air was pleasantly cool on his face. The mosquitoes had all gone to bed. This'd be a nice time to sit out. He had to sidle between the pair of black-and-white police-model Chevy Blazers parked too close together at the back door of the station. Ah yes, the celebrated Blazers The most expensive Blazers in the history of the world Sixty-eight-thousand bucks, and only the beginning A cop on lifetime disability, a career-ending criminal conviction, a million-dollar lawsuit; the lengths we go to in this town to support our local police chef.

The four-wheel-drive vehicles had been added to the fleet the previous year after the selectmen, their skepticism worn down by three years of relentless lobbying by Chief Paradisio, had included an item appropriating funds for their purchase in the warrant for town meeting, at last accepting his strenuous argument that the two specially equipped vehicles were needed to pursue and capture what he foresaw as a growing host of similarly outfitted law-breakers seeking to escape detection and arrest 'merely by going in the woods to commit their crimes, or else committing them where they always have, and then getting away by driving off into the woods, where we can't go after them." There was some opposition but the item passed by voice vote.

Ins Blanchard, thirty-two, was a member of the ad hoc Canterbury School Citizens Advisory Committee. Petite but muscularly athletic at sixteen she had been a state champion gymnast; later she had graduated from Springfield College with a degree in phys ed and a certificate to teach it she was the fierce single mother of four daughters, all enrolled in Canterbury public schools Their father, Dave, a heavy equipment operator, had found winter work in Louisiana two years before but failed to return from it in the spring as promised, or remit any money for support. His whereabouts remained unknown. Unable to secure a position as a gym teacher, she kept the mortgage current on the house resentfully using money she'd inherited from a grandmother and earmarked for the girls' education, supporting them meagerly with her earnings as an instructor in aerobics in the Canterbury Spa and Health Club. Earlier that evening she had angrily expressed her considerable fury at rejection of a school budget item of $113,000 earmarked to restore art, music and drama to the curricula in all grades and establish a full varsity athletic program, including gymnastics, for girls at Canterbury High. When Sal's Blazer item passed she came to her feet enraged and shouting: "Oh you filthy rotten bastards."

Ruled out of order by the moderator, Mason Turner, the forbidding grey-haired senior loan officer at the Pioneer Trust Co." she ignored repeated blows of the gavel and refused to sit down. She called the selectmen 'nothing but a bunch of lowdown dirty cop-suckers," bringing some startled laughter and scattered applause, 'approving extravagant new toys for the Paradise gestapo instead of doing what's right by the kids."

Scattered cheering broke out, countered at once by booing and shouts of'Ah sid down ya big-mouth bitch." When she again failed to heed the gavel declaring "I'll talk as much as I want, assholes' and the moderator's fourth order to be silent, calling him 'a damned lickspittle for that gang of spineless clowns," Turner ordered the policeman on duty, Ptl. Greg Morrison, to escort her from the building.