George Higgins - A change of gravity

"He doesn't interpret anything, either, tell you what to think about it. He tells you what he thinks but he's not real confident about it, so you can overlook it. And so those're the things I'm trying to remember all the time tonight when he comes outta left field and absolutely stuns me, we're out there inna back waitin' for the prisoners to come out.

"I forget how it came up, but it seemed like before I knew it we're talking how he's sort of vaguely heard you're in some sort of trouble, and do I have any idea what it is. At first I figured maybe he was just fishing around, but every time I tried to change the subject, which I must've, three or four times, he came right back to it. The gist of it seemed to be the Grey Hills memberships. He suspects they were fairly expensive, and he knows it costs a lot to play golf on the public courses so it must take one shitload of money at Grey Hills. He knows we've been playing there a long time, so we must've paid a lot of money, and he's really curious about where we got it. And also where you got the money for the Bell Woods house and the summer house, as well, which for all he knows is onna Cape but he did throw in that it might be onna Vineyard. He didn't mention under-the-table campaign funds or kickbacks, or maybe bribes, but I felt pretty sure if I asked him how it was he thought you got it, that is what he would've said.

"He had me close to panic. He kept pushing me on how much it cost to join Grey Hills and of course I didn't wanna tell him, so I keep saying I forget and trynah get him interested in something else, almost anything. I start tellin' him, what golfs about, and how you're always beatin' me and he wouldn't buy it. It was like he had a bone in his teeth: he kept comin' back to how much it costs for Grey Hills. So finally I just gave up and fell back on the standard strategy of what to do when you're trapped: I made something up."

"In other words, you lied," Hilliard said, 'and hoped that he'd believe it."

"You could put it that way, yeah," Merrion said. "I didn't actually come right out and say it cost between two and three grand. I said I remembered when we were doing it saying to you that if I put the price of the membership with what my car was worth, I could've had a brand-new Oldsmobile, which was true. And that as I recall it now, the amount of money that it would've taken me to make a deal trading my car on a new Eighty-eight then would've been two or three grand. Which is also the truth, or very close to it, but not close to the truth he was after."

"Did he buy it?" Hilliard said. "First, though, you tell me now, because now I don't remember. What was it, about double that? Six grand or so, apiece?"

"It was eighty-four hundred," Merrion said, 'which I was not about to tell Whalen. I could ah had three Oldsmobiles, six if I'd spent your piece of the action. Four thousand for the equity share, three thousand initiation. Fourteen hundred down-payment on the annual dues.

You're the math genius but I could do that one: times two, sixteen-thousand-eight-hundred American dollars. Not cheap.

"Did he buy what I tried to make him think it was? Probably. Two or three grand's still big money to Ev Whalen today. In fact I think if I'd told him the truth, and said sixteen-eight, he probably would not have believed me. That price to play golf would've boggled his mind, would've made him faint dead away. I doubt Whalen's house cost him that if he owns one now, after his kid. One of his kids, I think he's got two, had something terrible happen. So as a result the kid's helpless. Ev has not had a good time in this world; I try to cut him some slack."

"Sixteen-thousand, eight-hundred dollars," Hilliard said musingly.

"Jesus, that was expensive. Seven percent compound interest, more than twenty years: fifty grand, about, by now, if you'd left it in the bank."

"Yeah, right," Merrion said, 'if you don't deduct the taxes that you hadda pay every April on the interest that it earned from year to year.

Which you would've, of course, so that you'd now have a lot less. With inflation, you'd have nothin'. Less'n nothing, actually. Plus which the last time they talked about maybe re-opening membership, so they could put a dome over the pool and people could swim inna winter? They ended up not dotn' it, of course, but before that the talk was they'd be asking thirty-five K for the equity ante alone. Which I think was most likely what killed it: not the prospect of the course getting' too crowded, but the fact that the only people who would've had that kind of loose change to spend on playin' golf d be pro athletes and major drug-dealers, and havin' them as members scared the power elite.

"So you could say that we got a bargain. I think it's been a damned good investment. It's hard to play golf and have drinks inna bank, and anyway, over the years I've dropped a lot of dollars doing stuff and buying things that weren't worth what I paid, and I've had my regrets.

But I never regretted Grey Hills. That was a damned smart investment.

I've been having a wonderful time for over twenty years now with my high-priced toy, and I'm not even close to bein' through havin' fun with it yet.

"But tonight I was not havin' fun. Tonight I am a worried man. Whalen has heard something about you and me, and that means it's out on the street. What it is specifically I could not get out of him. I suspect he doesn't know either, exactly what the feds're doing. But they're doing something, he knows, and that means this will not go away. So that's why I hadda see you tonight. I was hoping that maybe you could make me feel better. At least tell me what's going on, which you did not this afternoon; what they're after you for, and therefore why they're after me."

Hilliard's face was grey in the moonlight. He licked his lips. He shook his head. "I want to say I know, and of course I'll tell you, but I can't because I don't," he said miserably, looking down and studying his hands. He stopped and shook his head. "Pooler isn't sure either. Or he wasn't when he called me, late Friday afternoon." His voice trailed away and stopped. He coughed a couple of times and changed his position, as though that would help to dislodge some foreign substance that had accumulated in his throat. He covered his mouth and coughed several times.

Over his right shoulder Merrion saw a robed figure come out of the shadows into the dim light at the front of the kitchen. It was a woman. He could not make out her features but could see that her hair was blonde and that the robe was too big for her. She went to the refrigerator and opened it, taking out a quart carton of milk. She put it on the counter and opened the cupboard above it, removing a glass.

She poured the glass half full. She put the carton back into the refrigerator and closed it. She picked up the glass and turned toward the glass door, advancing into the soft light so he could see her clearly, looking straight into his eyes. Then Mercy Hilliard smiled comp licitly at her ex-husband's best friend, so that he could not help but smile back. Then she raised her milk in a silent toast before giving him a small fluttery wave and disappearing back into the shadows.

Hilliard, still looking down on his hands folded in his lap, said: "All Bob knew on Friday was that he couldn't see how the heck they could do anything to either of us on campaign funds or anything else. I haven't run now for over ten years. The federal statute of limitations is five. So I said: "Well, then there's nothing to get, and they've got their heads up their asses. I have to be in the clear."

"And he said, "Well, that's what you'd like to think, naturally, and not knowing exactly what their approach is, that is of course what you would think. But this's no ghost-image we're looking at here, something that will just go away. It's too substantial to be a mirage; the rumbling's just too distinct. It must be that they think they've found a way, to get around the time problem. Now our job's to find out just what that way is, and find a way to block them if we can. I'm on the case; I am actively on it. By Monday I should know what it is that they're after. Have Merrion come in to see me then, late in the afternoon. Then I'll be back to you."