A change of gravity

TWENTY-FOUR

"I think the bastard actually liked explaining it all to me," Merrion told Hilliard after dinner in the dim dark-panelled bar at Grey Hills.

"Listening to him… I sat there and he talked and I heard what he was saying and it was like I'd stepped outside myself, and what I wanted to do more'n anything in the whole world was stand up and whack him one.

It was the same feeling that I had the day I went back with my mother to see the specialist, the "geriatricist" sounds like a circus act, guy who rides a bike naked onna high-wire, something. Her regular doctor sent us to him, see if he could figure out what was going on with her.

"Have him run a few tests." Duck when they say "a few tests"; they're warmin' up to tell you you're doomed.

"The idea was to find out why she was forgetting things, who she was or where she lived; why she mattered in the world and who she mattered to.

Naturally my dear brother Chris's nowhere to be seen; that's a family tradition. I can tell when the fat's inna fire: Chris's long-gone an' hard to find.

"She went outdoors one cold morning, late November, in her nightgown, barefoot. Went for a stroll down the street. Eight-thirty or so. Lots of people must've seen her, going off to work in their cars, coats on and the heaters going, barefoot lady in her nightgown walking down the street, but nobody stopped and tried to help her, or called the cops, their car-phone. They didn't care if something happened to her, nobody they knew; just ignored her and drove right on by. She got about a mile before someone who knew her from the bakery stopped her car and hollered at her, snapped her out of it, thank God; drove her home and called me. She'd only done it that once, but even once gets you worried. Next time she might not be that lucky, wander off and freeze to death, do something else and get hurt.

"And both of us already… it wasn't like we didn't have an inkling what was going on. We didn't know the details but we had a pretty good idea. She was gradually losing her buttons. We'd seen it happen to other people. Her mother, Rose; then they called it "hardening of the arteries." "Her brain isn't getting enough blood she's getting old, and simple, too." Before wed heard of senile dementia and Alzheimer's.

When she was lucid, which she was most of the time she had a pretty good idea that when she wasn't quite right, that was probably the explanation.

"But we didn't want to have that pretty good idea, you know? We didn't like having it. And her doctor, Paul Marsh, dead himself now: the reason that he sent us to this baby-faced specialist — looked like he was about fourteen was because he didn't want it to be what we all knew it was. He was the family doctor. He'd been treating her for years,

"taking care of all of you," was what he said. She was as much a friend of his as a patient. He didn't want her to have what she had, and for damned sure he didn't want to be the one to tell her. This new guy would do that. Wouldn't bother him; he didn't know Polly from a load of goats. We were seeing him to spare Paul. I suppose it was in a good cause.

"So they did those few tests they had in mind to do on her, and that took quite a while. "A few tests" is quite a lot, you find, when you start taking them. And then they told us to go home until they could "just get all the results back here, take a look at them so we can see what they mean." Give us a few more days or so to make-believe and hope that what we knew was going on was not. Then they had us back again and this time he sees us in his nice office, about sixteen diplomas on his wall and the kind of smooth white face you'd expect to see on your executioner. The vet we took our last dog to, have him put to sleep: he had a kinder face, I swear he at least pretended he felt sorry it hadda be done. But this assassin sits us down and quite pleasantly informs my mother and me that one by one, a few here, few there, she's begun to lose her marbles. And there's nothing he can do.

"For us this was kind of upsetting news, you know? But for him it was all in a day's work, like he's conducting an experiment. "Okay, let's see how these two take it when I hand the sentence down, tell them there's no hope." I suppose in his line of work, has to do this every day, gets to be routine. But my God, it hurts like hell when you're the people it's bein' done to then it's not routine at all.

"I got the same feeling listening to Pooler. I think he was making it sound worsen it is. I realize this isn't gonna be fun, something we'll really enjoy, fucking romp in a meadow or something, but he sure didn't go out of his way to make it sound better.

"He said they call it the Public Corruption Unit," Merrion said. "Said it didn't exist when he was in the US Attorney's office, twenty-odd years ago. I guess this's some new drill they dreamed up recently.

Almost smacking his lips, the son of a bitch; I think he envies the bastards. "Gee, that looks like fun; wish wed thought of it." Guys like him're like dogs that've killed once and had that first taste of blood: they never get over it. You know they'll kill again."

"But then, of course," Pooler said to Merrion, 'then there were only a dozen or so of us assistants; now there's about seven times that many.

And there wasn't any western division of the District of Massachusetts, no federal court or satellite US Attorney's office out here. So things do change. There're more of them now with time on their hands, looking for something to do. They're bound to be more aggressive. To us older hands some of the things they propose to do seem a little far-fetched at first blush, but they've been making them stick.

"Essentially the unit operates on the same principle as the old Organized Crime Strike Forces: target prosecution. They identify subjects they think're corrupt, state and local officials, and then they study their official acts to see if they can find a way to apply federal criminal statutes. They've used the racketeering statutes, which were enacted to go after the Mafia, to go after people paying and accepting kickbacks on state contracts. They've charged mail fraud against people falsely claiming they can't work in order to get state and municipal disability pensions. Hard to argue with; they mail in the false statements of injury and get their checks by mail. The wire fraud statutes've been used to get people who picked up a phone to promise a bribe to a local plumbing inspector, just across town, and nailed the inspector for taking the call and taking the money. And of course they've been using the criminal tax-evasion statutes ever since the Thirties, when some frustrated genius said: "Well damnit all, if we can't prove Capone had people murdered, as he did, let's get him for tax evasion."

"That looks like the approach they're going to take with our friend Hilliard," Pooler said, his expression a mixture of amusement and contempt. To Hilliard, Merrion said: "I dunno whether he was sneering at the federal fuckers or at us."

Pooler shrugged. "Not that Danny's quite as big a trophy as Al Capone was, but he had a lot of power in his day, and he made himself conspicuous with his not-so-private life, so a lot of people know him.

They still recognize his name. Get a grand jury to indict him and you're guaranteed a headline. Drop enough broad hints around before you go for the indictment, which is what they're doing now, you build up suspense; anticipation fed by rumor makes the headlines even bigger."

"Danny's always paid his taxes," Merrion said. "So've I; we both have.

Danny never took a bribe. Once when something I said made him think that I might do that, he as much as told me that if I had goin' on-the-take in mind, he wouldn't put me in a job. I eased his mind on that.

"Now, have I ever done a favor for a guy, given breaks to people who'd done things they shouldn't do? Sure, of course I have, and so has Danny: many favors. And gotten many in return. Sometimes a guy's bought me a drink after I've helped him out. Once or twice I've been out somewhere having dinner with a lady friend, and when it's come time for the check I find out I'm not getting one — someone I know but didn't see spotted us when we came in; on his way out told the maitre d', give our check to him. That's happened to Danny too, more times'n me. Not because he's crooked; because he knows more people. Friends of his picking up a check or giving him tickets to the ballgame? Sure, small stuff like that, of course we've done it.

"But never have we taken money, not once. That was always out of the question. Now are you telling me we're guilty of something? A federal offense? I don't believe it."

Pooler sighed. "Amby," he said, 'you and I've always had trouble talking. We just can't seem to communicate. You refuse to hear what I'm trying to tell you, and what you say to me's unresponsive.

"What you choose to believe is irrelevant, hear me? Put it aside; it doesn't matter. The feds've picked up on you two. My guess is what got their attention, made them think you might be worth going after, is that you and Danny, especially Danny, have lived very well on your earnings. Danny's real estate holdings for example: a state legislator, lawyer who never practiced, managed to acquire a ten-room house in Bell Woods where his ex lives; a three-bedroom cottage in West Chop; and a three-bedroom townhouse condo in Wisdom House. He drives a Mercedes. All the while living a lavish lifestyle of which the Grey Hills membership is not the only but certainly a prime example. Quite an accomplishment, considering that until about ten years ago his reported income never exceeded fifty thousand dollars a year.

"They have suspicious minds. When they see a politician who's pulled off something like that, the first thing they think is that he did it by taking kickbacks from state contractors who disguised them as campaign contributions, and converted the campaign funds to pay his personal expenses.

"They realize he and his now-ex-wife had the house in Holyoke, and he inherited his parents' property, their house in Holyoke and the camp on Lake Sunapee, all of which he sold. The feds say if you combine the proceeds of selling off those three properties, that accounts for the big house and land worth upwards of four hundred thousand by now, all of it debt-free in Bell Woods.

"Okay, but now what? That exhausts all the capital they concede he came by honestly. Where did he get the twenty-six-thousand-dollar down-payment on the house on the Vineyard? That was over twenty years ago. He was a legislator, making about forty grand a year. As far as the IRS knows, at least; that's all his tax-returns show.

"He's only bought two cars in that period. But they were both Mercedes, very costly automobiles. When he bought the first one he was still in the legislature. It cost him about a year's pay; so what did he live on?

"And that still leaves him to account for the fifteen thousand he somehow found to be put down on the townhouse, while he was going through a very costly divorce, buying the second Mercedes, and financing his scandalous high life. The feds maybe can't prove he did any singing, but they've got all the evidence of wine and women they could possibly want.

"They think the only way he could possibly have done all that was by taking payoffs from people who then got big contracts from the state, as several of his biggest contributors did. Contracts to install electrical systems in state buildings: his late generous backer Carl Kuiper's electrical company up in Deerfield did just under sixteen million bucks of that work during the last nine years that Danny was chairman of Ways and Means. During that same period: nine-point' three-million in state printing contracts to Haskell Sanderson's printing plant in Greenfield. An average of nine-hundred' and-eleven-thousand dollars a year in rent for state office space in western Massachusetts: to real estate holding companies owned or controlled by the Carnes family."

He gazed at Merrion. "There's probably more, if they look, as of course they are planning to do. But on the basis of what they've told me they already know, and what I can further surmise, I think it's going to be very difficult for Danny and me to come up with convincing evidence to rebut the inferences a jury will draw from those facts. I realize you're not a lawyer, but most jurors aren't either; wouldn't you share my concern?"

Merrion coughed. "Well," he said, "I never handled contributions. I was never involved in finances. I just managed the campaigns, day to day, night to night. Never saw any bills, any checks. Didn't want to.

At the beginning Mercy kept the books, and then after he got elected to the House the first time, Roy Carnes's accountants took over the financial end of things, handled it out of his office. That was always Roy Carnes's job."

"I'm aware of that," Pooler said, 'but you haven't answered my question. Do you think a jury'll acquit, when they see proof of what I've just said?"

"Look." Merrion shifted in the chair and crossed his legs. He folded his hands on his right thigh. "Look," he said again, 'when you said we never got along, you were right. We agree that we don't like each other; I don't think we're ever gonna. To answer your question: no, I don't think that a jury hearing what you just told me would be very likely to return a Not Guilty. But you are a lawyer, and my question for you as a lawyer is this: Why couldn't any halfway-competent attorney for Danny stop the prosecutor from proving that case to a jury? Danny's last campaign was in Nineteen-eighty-two. His campaign fund closed a year later. That's over twelve years ago. Have these federal magicians repealed the statute of limitations? Or aren't you competent counsel?"

Pooler shook his head, smiling. "You must've outsmarted yourself many times during your long career," he said. "Always thinking you're one step ahead, when you're generally out of the race.

"They don't need to repeal the statute, Amby. They've found a way around it. All they need now is you to guide them to their goal.

They're aware you wont want to; you're loyal to Danny, and so you'll refuse. But they think they have a way to make you do what they want you to do.

"I omitted an item from that history of Dan's provable spending. I'm surprised you didn't notice it. You can be very sure the feds have. A quarter-century of annual dues and fees for his membership in Grey Hills."

He gazed at Merrion. "Which by itself, as you and I both know, has come to a pile of money. The year you two got in you paid close to nine thousand dollars initiation, dues and fees for him. They say that was income to him, as the dues've been too, every year since."

BuM shit Merrion said, 'that was a gift. All those dues and things were gifts. Danny and me'd been friends over ten years by the time we joined. He was my best friend inna world. If I hadn't gone to work for Danny I'd probably still be behind the Parts and Service desk up at Valley Ford. No reflection on John Casey; he was a good guy, and he treated the Merrions well, but that was not the kind of life I had in mind. I asked Danny to get me the clerk's job 'cause by then I'd decided I didn't wanna go into teaching and I thought it would be a good job to have. He talked to the Carneses and Judge Spring, and I talked to Larry Lane myself. Nobody had any objections, so I got the job, third assistant clerk.

"It's a good job and I've been very happy with it, but at no time has it ever been what you'd call a major plum. Sure it turned out to be one, after Larry Lane died, but that wasn't the job, it was Larry. By the time he retired, four years after I came in, wed become pretty good friends. Then I find out he's very sick, in addition to drinking too much, and in case he might still feel cheerful while he's dying, his own family threw him out. What can I tell you? He's sick and alone; I did what I could to take care of the guy, not that it was very much.

Two years or so later he's dead.

"Until he got sick I assumed all he had was his pension and when he died that'd go to his widow. I never knew he had any other money, much less that he'd leave it to me. And neither did Danny, of course. So I couldn't've done it for that. I was just trying to be a nice guy. So then, what am I supposed to do when I find out about the money? Give it away to strangers? I don't think so. I gave me and my best friend a present, something we both always wanted to have, and never expected to get. Those memberships at Grey Hills you resent us so much for having.

"I always paid taxes on the money, every year, before I spent any of it. You can go ask my accountant. I didn't mind doin' that — well, I minded, but no more'n everyone else who pays taxes. But then couldn't I use some of what I had left to give Danny a present? I wouldn't've had it without him."

"They're not saying you couldn't give it to him, Amby," Pooler said.

"Quite the opposite: they don't dispute that at all. They're saying that you did give it to him, eighty-five hundred or so the first year, and thousands more after that ever since, year after year after year.

They don't even really care now that Lane got the money from corruption death takes the taint off dirty money; they don't see any way to take Lane's loot away from you. But they'll be sure to put the fact in evidence just the same. "See? Graft's a tradition in Massachusetts.

Graft over the years if it's wisely invested can go on yielding graft to the next generation. It's like planting a poisonous tree; the booty never stops giving."

"What they do dispute, though, is that it was a gift. They say it was payment to him under the corrupt bargain you made: a piece of whatever action you got as a result of him getting you that job. So to him it was income, illegal income, like Capone's bootleg millions, but still taxable, and he's never paid taxes on it."

Pooler lowered his head and leaned across the desk, staring at Merrion.

He moistened his lips with his tongue; his eyes glittered. "He didn't pay taxes on that money last year, Amby. He didn't pay them the year before that, or the year before that one, either, didn't pay in any year they still can reach under the five-year statute limiting criminal prosecutions. And once they prove something within the statute, they can go back to the dawn of creation, allege it was all a continuing scheme of corruption that persists to this very day. All they have to do is grant you immunity and you'll have to testify to what everybody knows you've been doing all these years. That will prove both the source and the income, and Danny's benefit from it.

"They'll try to give you what's called use immunity, meaning that they wont be able to use anything you say to prosecute you, except for perjury. But that'd leave them still able to come after you for some crime you committed jointly with Danny they can prove another way, and you do not want that. If you do as I'm suggesting and go to Geoff Cohen, he'll say that's not good enough, make them ante up transactional immunity. That would mean nothing that they make you testify about can ever be charged against you.

"They'll do it. They don't want you, they want Danny, and I think they're going to get him good. Unless I can cut a deal for him, the likes of which I've never seen, Dan Hilliard is going to jail."

"Ahhhhh," Merrion said, closing his eyes, emptying his lungs, and sagging in the chair. "I do not want to hear this."

"What I'm getting from them is just preliminary," Pooler said relentlessly, 'but it's bad enough. They figure by the time they get through adding interest and penalties on that club membership item alone, they'll be able to say he's evaded taxes on over two hundred thousand dollars. And more importantly to them, as I say, once they prove that he hasn't paid taxes on those dues and fees for the last three years as of course they can, very easily, then they can allege that that was just one aspect of an elegant scheme. One going all the way back to Seventy-two when he first accepted the payoff from you for the membership, when you got into Grey Hills.

"And that then will mean they'll be able to prove all the other crooked things he was doing after that, all the kickbacks and bribes they think he started accepting when he really rose to power as the head of Ways and Means Seventy-three or four, was it? All of those kickbacks on state contracts, calling them "campaign contributions" but treating them as income for his personal use and luxurious enjoyment. Illegal income, to be sure, ill-gotten gains aren't exempt.

"They'll have him in a steamer-trunk, ready to ship. It wont be to maximum security, no, but it'll probably have bars on the windows, and he wont be able to leave. They reckon that with all their multipliers of interest and penalty charges, they'll have him twisting in the wind for taking money and evading federal income taxes on it totalling about two million dollars. And after they've forfeited to the government everything that they can lay their hands on, the state will take what's left.

"So, that's their scenario. First they're going to put the cuffs on him and cart him off to jail, and then they're going pick him clean, take everything he's got. He'll be in all the papers, maybe national TV. "Another crooked Bay State politician went to federal prison today; details at eleven."

"He's got this look he gives you when he says stuff like that," Merrion said to Hilliard. '"Local politicians," and "crooked state and local politicians," like he's talking about some lower form of life starfish or something.

"I sat there looking at him," Merrion said to Hilliard, and what I want to say is: "The what? Run that one by me again?" But I don't. I don't think it matters how many times I make him say it, it's not gonna change."

Hilliard looked grey and stricken. Merrion had not seen him look like that since his first term in the House when he came home from Boston on the afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963, after JFK was shot in Dallas. "I called Mercy 'fore I left, and she already knew," he said to Merrion that day. "She was crying. So was I. I said "What will happen to us now, what will happen to us now? All I can seem to do is cry." She said: "It's what you should be doing. Eleven John, thirty-five." I looked it up. "Jesus wept."

"I can't believe what they're saying," Merrion said. "AH these years I've been paying you kickbacks for getting me the clerk's job, like Fiddle Barrow paid to Chassy and Larry and Roy Carnes for the courthouse contract, for them lettin' him cheap jack the job, when I thought I was giving you presents. I always paid taxes on the money I used for that when Fourmen's Trust made the annual distribution. So therefore I am okay. But they think you didn't pay income taxes on the money I paid to Grey Hills for you.

"Of course I didn't," Hilliard said. "I told my accountant about it, the first year, and he told me it was a gift. You were giving me a present, and as long as it didn't come to ten-grand in any one year or go over thirty-grand in our lifetime, tax laws that we had then, it wasn't taxable. Sam Evans said the same thing, I was going through the divorce and we're making out the statement of my income and expenses.

What you were paying for me at Grey Hills wasn't on either one. He said, "Mercy's not entitled to a share of a present you get from Merrion. She's married to you, not to Ambrose. He doesn't have to pay alimony." And now it's even more untaxable'n it was then. Now there's really no limit on gifts. As long as you're not trying to beat the estate tax, you can be as generous as you like."

"That's what I said to Pooler," Merrion said. "I said I wasn't kicking back anything to you. I was giving you a gift. You got me the job which resulted in me getting the money. You did it because you're my friend. As a result of me having the job, I came into some money.

Quite a lot of it, in fact. But neither one of us had any idea, going in, that that money even existed. Much less that I would wind up getting it.

'"It was like I hit the lottery," I said to Pooler. "You do that, you naturally want to share it with someone, family and also your friends.

All the family I had was my mother, and that fuckin' brother of mine. I paid off the mortgage on my mother's house, which's now mine, and made sure she was well-taken care of. Only reason she stayed workin' at Slade's was because she liked the job. I didn't give Chris a fuckin' thing. I don't like his attitude., Danny's the best friend any man ever had. Why wouldn't I share with him?"

"You know what he said?" Merrion said. "Pooler said to me: "Very touching. Better hope that the jury believes it."

"He thinks they probably wont. We been in this club a long time, Danny. We've belonged here almost twenny-five years. By the time they add up everything I paid Grey Hills for you, they've got you evading almost two hundred grand, taxes. They start adding interest and penalties; they're inna millions, no sweat. Pooler says for that you go to jail."

"In other words," Hilliard said, 'it's gonna be the end of me, maybe the end of your job as a clerk, but certainly the end of me."

"That's what he seems to be saying," Merrion said.

"What the hellV Hilliard said, anguish in his voice. "Do we know what it was that brought this on? Did Pooler tell you that? Playing golfs not a crime, not the last I heard, anyway, although the way we play it maybe should be. And joining a country club: that isn't, either, even when it's one that costs a lot of money. What made them decide to come after me, and therefore to come after you?

"I asked Pooler that," Merrion said. "This smells like revenge to me.

Has it got anything to do with anything we actually do in politics!

Something they can point to and say: "See? It was a fraud, right from the very beginning'? I don't remember it that way. I don't remember one occasion when Danny and I went off by ourselves and said: "Okay now, how can we make money from this? Not once in all the years." And he shrugged his shoulders and said: "I dunno. Some people think head-hunting's fun."

"But what brought it on nowV Hilliard said. "I've been out of sight for ten years."

"Pooler thinks it may go back to when you and Mercy got divorced. He said when he spoke to Sam Evans about it, Sam just shook his head and said it was the pictures inna papers, you and alia blonde babes with big tits and the skirts that just covered their breakfast. Someone, maybe someone in the IRS, maybe someone who's now in the US Attorney's office, painted a target on you, decided you should be punished. Sam told Pooler he told you not to let that juicy stuff happen, to lie low 'til the case was over, and you couldn't even do that. But at the time all he had in mind was keeping down what Mercy'd get in the settlement.

He didn't think you'd go to jail for disregarding what he said."

Hilliard seemed not to have heard him. "Pooler couldn't explain it to me the other day, either, why they're doing this to me now scalping me, ripping my hair off." He shook his head and snuffled.

"It's frightening, Amby. Makes me feel so exposed," Hilliard said "All these years, and now basically what he's saying is it could be anything, anything I might've ever done, or even said, to someone. Some casual remark that pissed someone off, and now they've found a pretext to get even, calling me what amounts to a thief. "You ran for office in order to steal." How the hell do you defend yourself?"

He shook his head again. "The short answer is that you can't," he said. Then he began to cry. He sat there at the table in the dim corner of the bar at Grey Hills and his eyes filled up with tears. He shook his head and said: "It was never that way, Amby. You know that, it wasn't. It was never that way at all."