A change of gravity

SIXTEEN

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.

She at first ignored Morrison's purposive approach and his gently regretful statement, "Fraid I'll have to ask you to come along now, Ma'am," instead yelling: "Oh sure, Turner, pompous old fart, calling Sal's goons to the rescue." Then she turned and snarled at Morrison:

"Get away from me, you jerk."

He extended his left hand toward her. "Intending," as he testified before Judge Cavanaugh a month later in Commonwealth v. Blanchard, 'since she had indicated that she would not come with me voluntarily, to place it firmly on her right shoulder, in order to lead her away."

She grabbed his wrist with both hands and bit him on the joint of the thumb and the fold of flesh between it and the forefinger, chomping down so that she broke the skin, tore the flesh and drew blood. After Morrison had subdued her with the help of an off-duty policewoman, Ptl.

Connie Foley, a recreational boxer, who piston-punched Blanchard hard three times in the solar plexus and placed her under arrest to be transported to the station and locked up, he was driven to the emergency room at Holyoke Hospital for nine stitches and a painful series of precautionary shots to guard against blood poisoning and infection.

"Not that we think she's rabid," the nurse with the big needle told him, 'but human bites're the worst kind, when it comes to infection."

"I've heard that," the cop said, 'heard that many times. I don't need to be convinced JesusmotherfuckingChrist! you hit the goddamn bone again. Is this your first time doing this or is it you don't like my looks?"

At trial, Officer Morrison further testified that doctors had told him he would have to wear the white plastic prosthetic device specially moulded to immobilize his left hand for at least six more weeks, in order to allow damaged cartilage to heal and see whether a torn tendon would mend without surgery. If x-rays showed that the tendon had mended, he could expect to spend between one and two months in rehabilitation. If the x-rays showed the tendon had not repaired itself, he would require surgery and rehabilitation and about a year to recover full use of his left hand.

Officer Morrison testified that since he was left-handed, the prosthesis prevented him from gripping his sidearm or baton, writing incident reports or using the two-way radio in his patrol car while underway, since to do so would require him to depend upon his unusable left hand to steer while operating the radio with his right. He said that as a result he had been on total disability ever since the incident and expected to remain off-duty for at least three more months.

After the trial, jury-waived, on a pretty afternoon in April, Iris Blanchard was found guilty by Judge Leonard Cavanaugh on charges of disrupting a public meeting; disorderly conduct; making an affray; assault on a police officer; assault and battery with a deadly weapon to wit: teeth; resisting arrest; and mayhem.

"These are very serious charges, Mrs. Blanchard," the judge said, Merrion having briefed him about what the cops were saying at the station and around the courthouse about noisy female politicians who bit cops to dramatize their advocacy of children's issues and their own obvious interest in creating new teaching jobs. "If you think there's something funny or endearing in what your lawyer's tried to minimize as this "feistiness" of yours, I assure you I do not. And if you should appeal this verdict, as you certainly have every right to do, my guess is any judge and jury you may get in the superior court will agree with me not you. Or your lawyer, either. Same when it comes to sentencing:

You've given any judge deciding what to do with you several excellent reasons to do as the police prosecutor here's suggested: send you down to Framingham for a year or so, to reflect on what you did.

"And in fact I am going to sentence you to the women's correctional institution," the judge said, 'not for a year and a day, as the prosecutor's recommended, but for five full years." Iris Blanchard had been striving to hide signs of secret amusement, trying to appear contrite; now she flinched visibly and gasped. Her lawyer, Maxine Golden from the Mass. Defenders, moved closer beside her and put a reassuring hand on her arm.

"What you did wasn't funny. And I've been very much concerned by your debonair demeanor, the way you've behaved in this court. Also by some rather light-hearted statements that your lawyer's made in questioning the witness," Golden's eyebrows lifted, 'suggesting to me that deep down inside you believe it was mischief you did, some sort of amusing prank.

"It was not. This was a bad and serious thing that you did. It was also extremely dangerous. For someone serving on a school committee, supposedly concerned with the education and development of children, you set one lousy example. You have to (I pay for your actions. Not literally, of course: there isn't any point in fining you a substantial amount, say several thousand dollars, as the statues would allow me; that would only be another way of sending you to jail, because you clearly couldn't pay."

Blanchard gasped again and then began to sob, putting her hands to her face. Golden put her arm around her. "So I'm in a dilemma, Mrs.

Blanchard, which I do not like, and I blame you for putting me in it. I think you need a severe lesson, but at the same time I'm aware you have young children and appear to be their only source of parental support.

So I know you've been under a lot of pressure, and I'm willing to take that into account.

"You have to understand that you've put someone else now under pressure, terrible pressure. Officer Morrison's also a young parent.

He and his wife have a new baby, who of course they both love very much. Just as much as you do your kids. And after what you did to him, to Officer Morrison, breaking the skin and causing him to bleed as you did, they both have to be very concerned of the possibility of very serious consequences.

"I'm talking about the HIV virus, the possibility that you may have given him AIDS."

Now thoroughly alarmed, Golden stared at the judge, then she looked at her client and mouthed the words: "Do you know if you have AIDS?"

Blanchard sobbed and shook her head, moaning: "No, of course I don't.

How could he say that to me? How could I have AIDS?"

Golden wheeled to face the judge. "I have to object most strongly to the court making that statement," she said loudly and as gruffly as she could. "Without any grounds whatever to make that allegation? That's an awful thing to do, in a public forum, absolutely shocking. My client doesn't have AIDS. How could you even suggest such a thing."

"Contain yourself, counsellor," the judge said. "Taking your client at her word, the most she can possibly say is that she doesn't think she has AIDS. As I understand it, when her no-good husband went to Louisiana and deserted her and their children two years ago, once and for all, it wasn't his first defection, just his last. He'd wandered off repeatedly before that, picking up women in bars. There'd been several previous separations, each followed by another unsuccessful attempt at reconciliation, during which she said he was always loving and tender. I assume that means they had sex.

"She doesn't know whether those other women, however many there may have been, were free of AIDS. Or whether one or more of those "women" might've been a man. All she knows is what her rotten ex-husband told her, and as we all know now, he was not to be trusted.

"So unless she's been tested, she doesn't really know whether he contracted the disease and passed it on to her during one of their lovey-dovey reconciliations, before he left her the last time and vanished into the mist. Therefore, Ms Golden, my question to you is:

Has your client been tested since her husband lit out for the territories, and if so what were the results?"

Golden conferred urgently with Blanchard, pulling her loose to whisper and cupping her hand over the side of her face otherwise visible from the bench. Blanchard shook her head and said audibly: "No, I never have been."

Golden sighed. She lowered her hand and faced the bench. "She says she's never been tested, your Honor."

The judge sighed and shook his head. "Oh dear," he said, "I was afraid of that.

"Well, no help for it; this is what I'm going to do here. Having in mind the very real anxiety that Officer Morrison and his wife have to feel here, Mrs. Blanchard, and also the fact that as I'm sure Attorney Golden can tell you I have no power to order you to do this; there's a law against it and anyway, as I see it, you could invoke the Fifth Amendment: I am going to put over for one week formal imposition of the sentence in this case. During that time I want you to consult with your attorney and decide, of your own free will, whether you should have a blood test to determine whether you carry the virus that causes AIDS. If you do that you'll be able to say whether you would have tested positive when you attacked Officer Morrison last month. And, if you instruct the testing lab to deliver a copy of the results to Mister Merrion, my clerk, for the court's information and that of Officer Morrison, we will then know that too.

"Now, if all that should take place, this is what I will do here when I review the case next week:

"I'll suspend imposition of the sentence to MCI Framingham for a period of two years, provided you agree to resign immediately from the School Advisory Committee, making a public statement you now understand that your conduct at the town meeting was an outrageous, shameful, reckless, and dangerous act for which you are deeply, deeply sorry. And ashamed.

And that even though you have expressed your deep regret to Officer Morrison and are keeping him in your prayers for his full recovery of the use of his left hand, you agree your actions mean that you're unfit to serve on the committee. And so you must step down.

"Assuming you decide that it's in everyone's best interest for you to do that, and the test results turn out to be negative as I'm sure you hope they do as fervently as everyone else involved you will further agree that at the end of that two-year period you will voluntarily submit to testing again. And if those results also prove to be negative for the HIV virus, and you have not been in any other trouble between now and then, I will reconsider, revise and revoke the jail sentence and you will be free to go."

Blanchard's first blood test had been negative. In the fourteen months since then the x-rays had shown that Morrison's tendon had failed to repair itself. Surgery had been performed. The doctors had found greater damage to the thumb joint than the x-rays had led them to expect, and now believed the operation should have been performed the night of the attack. They predicted Morrison would never regain more than sixty percent use of his left hand probably less, around forty.

Morrison two days later received a letter from Sidney Ferris, P.C." A Legal Corporation, doing business at 16 Amherst St. in Hampton Falls, expressing his belief that the officer had grounds for a medical malpractice suit which could be brought on a contingent' fee basis at absolutely no cost or expense to him unless the suit was successful, in which case the fee would be one-third of the damages collected.

Morrison had retained Ferris as his lawyer, authorizing him to file suit against Holyoke Hospital and the attending physician on duty in the emergency room town-meeting night, claiming actual damages for lost career earnings of $625,000 and an additional $600,000 for mental anguish, pain and suffering.

Ferris also handled Morrison's case before the Board of Workmen's Compensation, which awarded a tax-exempt permanent disability pension equal to fifty percent of his patrolman's pay. Ferris on behalf of Morrison had filed an appeal, saying that, as a matter of law, since Morrison had been injured in the line of duty, he was entitled either to a pension equal to one hundred percent of his pay, or else a fifty-percent pension calculated on the basis of the wages that he would have earned, given his likely prospects of rapid promotion to higher ranks during the additional thirty-three years he had expected to serve on the force.

Purely for amusement one night in the bar at Grey Hills, Merrion one night while having drinks with Hilliard had used drink-napkins to estimate the probable total cost of Iris Blanchard's tantrum, not only to the taxpayers of the town of Canterbury but also to the hospital and the doctor and their insurance carriers as well. Hilliard worked the figures faster in his head than Merrion could write them down on the napkins.

"With interest compounded at six percent, by the time they get the malpractice case tried, and figuring Morrison lives another fifty years, which at twenty-eight he should, collecting his pension all that time, I figure a little over seven million bucks. Seven million, seventy-thousand, you throw in the cost of Sally's two Blazers, the most expensive trucks built since the world began. And a good thing for all involved old Iris wasn't bred for the work, like a pit bull or something, take a man's arm off at the elbow; have to deed the cop the town if she had been."

When Merrion got to his car, alert for sounds of stealthy scuffling in the dark as he always was such nights, even though he was at the police station, lest some disgruntled defendant after being released had waited in the shadows to conk him when he came out and swipe his wallet and his car. Hearing nothing, he unlocked the Caddy quickly, tossing the portfolio in the back seat, sliding in and closing up all in one swift motion, re-locking the doors as he turned on the engine, the earphone keypad glowing green and chirping readiness on the center console.

At the next corner he had made up his mind and said loudly and roundly:

"Call… Danny." As he took the turn the voice-activated dialer started hooping digits to reach Hilliard at his condo at the Wisdom House in Hampton Pond (to call Hilliard at his office Merrion would have said: "Call… Hilliard'; in his Mercedes "Call… Daniel').

Moving north on Truman Boulevard under the blacker shadows cast by the oaks along the edges, he listened to the phone ring eleven times before Hilliard answered thickly through the phlegm of sleep: This'd better be important." Then he coughed.

"It is," Merrion said. "Put some coffee on for yourself and pour me a serious drink. No traffic, this hour. I'll be there in ten or twelve minutes."

"Minutes?" Hilliard said, 'what minutes. Whaddaya talkin'. You muss be drunk or you're nuts. You got any idea what time…"

"Yeah, one-forty-one," Merrion said, glancing at the digital clock on the dash. "I'm coming from the Canterbury cop house and I'm not drunk although I must be about the only one who's still awake in town and isn't. Very drunk out tonight. Every time I thought we must be finished, they'd bring in another indi gene tanked to the gills, singin' and talkin', all kinds of ragtime. Disgusting how they carry on."

During the late Seventies, Sal Paradisio had returned from a convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Montreal smitten by the lingo in a lecture given by an Indiana University criminologist from Bloomington. He had started referring to locally resident groups as 'the indigenous population' and to individual residents as indi genes The usage had become a Canterbury PD inside joke. Richie Hammond and Merrion when Richie for some reason wasn't hogging the bail fees as usual had gotten used to being summoned by solemn cops on busy weekends to 'come down and handle a whole herd' ah misbehavin' indi genes Two decades later Merrion still heard older officers say 'the fuckin' indi genes getting' outta hand again."

"I was asleep," Hilliard said.

"Figured you would be," Merrion said. "Most people are at this hour."

The big car went through the night like a luxury liner on the surface of a calm sea, the moon blinking on and off among the branches of the trees like the dot-dash of a signalman's light.

"So why're you bothering me like this then?" Hilliard said, whining,

"I never did nothing to you."

"I'm lonesome," Merrion said. "I've been working all night like a very good boy. Now I'm tired; I want to relax. Want to be with a friend, talk about the old days, when I sang in my chains like the sea."

"Huh?" Hilliard said. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I dunno," Merrion said. "I heard you say it a long time ago. I'm not sure but I think you said it to a woman. I meant to ask you what the hell you meant, besides wantin' to get her pants off. But then I decided you probably didn't know either. It just sounded good at the time."

"Look, Amby," Hilliard said, "I'm waking up. You can't come up here right now. It's the middle the night and I got sleep to get and I'm going to go back to bed."

"Don't hang up on me, Dan," Merrion said. "You'll just be wasting your time. I need to talk to you, and I need to talk to you tonight, and so that's what I'm going to do. I'll put you on auto re-dial if you hang up, which'll mean that you'll have to leave your phone off the hook, and it'll hum at you all night. So you still wont be able to get any sleep, or emergency calls from anyone else, and I know how you hate both those things. Now throw some clothes on and go out inna kitchen and put coffee on, and make me a Jack Daniel's and water, some ice.

I'll be there in eight minutes and you'll let me in or I'll sit on the stoop and I'll cry. And when all the neighbors wake up and say what's the matter, I'll say I'm an orphan got left on your doorstep and you're too mean to take me in, and can someone take me to the rectory."

"Tell me onna phone, Amby," Hilliard said. "Turn around and go back to your own house and bed, and tell me on the phone on the way. It's almost two in the morning for Christ sake. There's nothing that can't wait 'til morning."

"Yes there is," Merrion said, 'me."

Hilliard groaned. "Amby," he said, "I can't let you come up here tonight. I got someone here with me and, well, I just can't. I can't let you in if you come here. Tell me what it is on the phone."

"Danny," Merrion said, 'listen up now, friend of my youth: You have got to let me come in. Tell her to stay in the bedroom and sleep. Or him, if you now go both ways. You can say I insist if you want, 'cause I do. I don't want him or her to hear what I'm saying to you. This is strictly between you and me. That's why I've got to come up. This isn't something I'd say on a phone, anyway, but especially not on a car-phone. They don't need a wireman to sit in on car-phones; they don't even have to be cops anyone with an eighty-buck scanner can pick up what you say, just by purest accident. That give you any inkling of why I am coming?"

There was an extended silence. The Cadillac rushed quietly up the boulevard under the bright moon and dark trees. "I'll wake her up and send her home and make the coffee," Hilliard said. "Jack Daniel's, you said you wanted?"

"You got it, pal," Merrion said. "And don't bother sending her home.

Just tell her to stay inna bedroom and sleep. This's not something we want to share."

In a tee-shirt and grey drawstring sweatpants, clumps of his hair standing up and a look of deep concern on his face, Hilliard with a cup of tea in his hand met Merrion at the door and said: "Will you tell me what the…?"

Merrion shook his head and put his right forefinger to his lips. Then he pointed at the kitchen softly lit by one ceiling fixture over the sliding glass door leading outdoors and nodded. "That my drink I see on the counter there? That's what I need. Let's you and me go and get it." With his drink in hand Merrion took Hilliard's right elbow, steering him toward the door opening onto the townhouse patio. "Mawn now," he said, 'nice out tonight. Let's you and me go outside and chat." He slid the glass door open.

"I think you're getting' paranoid," Hilliard said, hanging back.

"That could be," Merrion said, "I got every reason to be. Anyway, there's no question I'm spooked. I prefer to talk out of doors."

Hilliard grabbed a dish-towel from the rack over the sink and led the way, Merrion sliding the glass door shut quietly behind them, Hilliard mopping the dew off the puffy green and yellow cushions of the lawn chairs. Seated so that he faced Hilliard and the glass door, Merrion said: "The first thing to keep in mind when you deal with fuckin' cops is that you want to keep them friendly if you can at almost any cost.

So that when you have to tell them No, you can't do what they want like on a warrant application, when they just don't have enough PC to let you let them go in and make a search some place they understand you really can't give them one. They don't think you're a prick who's just giving them a hard time, just to be a prick, because they think of you as a friend of theirs, and they know you would give them the paper if you could. And that way they don't get mad at you so they all start giving you all kinds of fuckin' grief alia time. Which as you know, that group can do."

Hilliard was still shaking off the dullness of sleep. "Absolutely," he said, 'because the last thing you want to have on your mind, and especially in a job like the one you've got, dealing with cops every day, you don't want to get them pissed off. But in any job, really, that'll always hold true: you don't want to get a cop mad at you. You get one cop mad at you, before you even know it, all the cops're mad at you. Because all the cops talk to each other, and they can make life miserable for you."

"Right," Merrion said. "Now the reason why I woke you up to talk is Sergeant Whalen. Where Ev Whalen is concerned, and he is the one concerns me, the stakes're even higher. The guy's a human vacuum cleaner, a rug-beatin', shampooin', Hooverin' machine with a bright white light onna front when it comes to diggin' up dirt. He knows stuff nobody knows. Half the time he doesn't know himself he knows it, the dirt that nobody else knows. But that changes nothing; it's still vintage dirt, and all you've got to do to get it out of him is two basic things.

"The first thing's to make sure you stay friends with him. This isn't hard because he wants to be friends with you, even more than you do with him. He's very insecure, I think. He's always afraid that nobody will like him. So he's got enough motivation for both of you. He thinks you're the one who's being nice. By talking to him now and then, sure, but even more by listening to him, spillin' his guts out to you.

"So that's the second thing you do: You make it very clear to him that not only are you always glad to see him but you really appreciate the things he has to tell you. You aren't just humoring him; you're interested.

"That's the only two things you hafta do. He likes you; he'll talk.

You say: "Hey Ev, how's it goin', huh, kid? What's goin' on; whaddaya hear?" And woof-woof; here it comes, you got it. Immediately the guy is telling you every damned thing he knows. Without even knowing, most of the time, what the hell most of it means, the significance of what he's sayin'. It's like you struck up a friendship at the track with a talking horse who tells you which one of his friends is gonna win that day because he likes you. And when you mention one day you're startin' to feel guilty, you've been getting' rich on him and you feel like you oughta share your winnings, he just shrugs it off and says: "Hey, great; I'm happy for you. But what good is money to me? I'm a horse.

Bring me an apple sometime."

"Ev Whalen's info is that good and he's got no idea how valuable it can be to you. He would've made a hell of a newspaperman. He works a lot harder'n most of them do, and he finds out a whole lot more stuff. But he doesn't know what news is. He thinks if he recognizes the subject everyone else must already know it. He thinks he's always the last kid onna block to find something out. Oh, and he doesn't question anything. He assumes whatever he knows must be the Gospel truth.

"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."

Hilliard looked up. "And that's really all that I know, Amby," he said earnestly. "I know you don't like Bob, but at least after you see him, you'll probably know what it is we have to contend with. And that will be before I do." Then he registered Merrion's expression of beguiled surprise. He spun in his chair and looked back into the kitchen, now unoccupied once more. He turned back and looked at Merrion. "What's with you?" he said. "Are you all right?"

Realizing he'd been holding his breath, Merrion exhaled heavily and smiled at Hilliard. "I think I am," he said. "I'm still worried, of course, but for now that's secondary. You said something about ghosts just then: I could swear I just saw one right there in your kitchen.

Has to be since it was the spitting image of your ex-wife, and I know she's on Martha's Vineyard so that couldn't be." Hilliard's face reddened. "Barged in on reunion night, did I?" Merrion said, grinning now. "Little duet of "Auld Lang Sync," I take it?"

Hilliard squirmed in the chair. He found his practiced sheepish grin and turned it on. "I've discovered that I may be getting old, Amby," he said. "And this world isn't getting any warmer. I find I still need all the friends I can get, even if only occasionally."

Merrion finished his drink and stood up. "Can't argue with you there, pal," he said. "Can't argue with you there at all."