A change of gravity

FOUR

According to Sam Paradisio's very best hearsay, Janet's most dangerous conduct was her smoking habit. "And this is not because I think everyone should quit today and then if they wont do it on their own, the government should make them. I'm the only person whose smoking ever bothered me, and I am in favor of letting people kill themselves any way they like. What I am not in favor of is other people killing them, for any reason whatsoever, and this lady's smoking habit, about two packs a day, could be something that will do that, make that happen. For her this is high-risk behavior.

"What makes me say this is that's what my violent hardened felon tells me. He's pretty specific. When he was in jail, they put in that No Smoking rule, and he hadda cold-turkey the habit. He said it was a real bitch.

'"Way worsen going off cocaine, or the booze or the pills. You can still get the butts, sure, but when you do you can't smoke 'em. Well, there're ways, but they're hard. How can you smoke without making smoke, which all the damned screws can then smell? If they don't actually see it. Pills and the other stuff: those you can do without anyone seeing you do it. But havin' a smoke: that's really hard. When they said you couldn't have any more of that, you really couldn't, just about, so that one's a real motherfucker."

Sammy Paradise had reported his conversation with Chappelle to Merrion over lunch on Friday of the previous week, the second in August. They had occupied their usual dark-brown oak booth in The Tavern on the northerly side of the green opposite the Strand Theater in the center of Canterbury, a block from the courthouse. Also as usual they could talk about confidential matters because they had the place pretty much to themselves; the restaurant workers paid no attention to their conversation and because they met at 1:15 when the court was in recess, there were no other customers.

Merrion was having a good sixteen-ounce strip sirloin steak broiled medium rare, a baked potato with sour cream and chives and a salad glistening with oil and vinegar dressing. He had nearly finished a pint of Lowenbrau dark beer and he planned to order another 'for dessert." Paradisio was eating a chicken salad sandwich on dark bread and as customary nursing a twelve-ounce glass of Miller Lite that he did not intend to finish.

Paradisio said Chappelle told him Janet's smoking was 'the only thing about her he's got strong feelings about. He really doesn't like it.

Because when she does it, it makes him want to smoke. And it was real hard for him to quit. He told her that and she said she can't stop.

She used to smoke even more, she told him, but then a while back she cut down. And she's got it down now to the point where she can actually ration them.

"He tells me that drives him nuts. "I could never do that. And I am a guy that they made quit completely. I know what I'm talking about.

Only smoke so many a day? Guarantee you, that'd drive me nuts."

"He acts like he's got her on surveillance. This's obviously become an obsession with the guy, keepin' track how much she smokes. "When she goes to bed at night she's got about four or five, maybe half a dozen of them left. Just enough to get her through the morning, just 'til she goes out again. Sittin' onnie edge the bed, there, 'fore the shower an' shampoo. Then: after she gets dressed and puts the coffee-maker on, dries herself off, an' brushes her hair. To dry it in the air, before she uses the hair-dryer. "Not as many split-ends," she tells me," this's him, now, tellin' me, '"when you do it this way you don't get so many split-ends." '"She says. Maybe that takes two butts. Mark down two for that, brings us up to three. Coffee's ready, ahh, then sugar, milk, have another one or two while she's drinkin' that. Now it's time to get dressed and go out the store, get ahold of a paper. Don't hafta actually go and buy it; just look up the page there where they print last night's number and see right there if you won. Scratch-ticket, large coffee. Use ten dollars' worth of food stamps, something costs about five bucks 'nd change. Leaves her enough to get change back to use for more smokes. Two more new fresh decks of butts. Something to look forward to, may turn out to be the only thing all day. Scratch the ticket. Have another one while you're doing that, or maybe on the way back. Six, I think, that makes it. Maybe seven, you lose count.

Not that it really matters."

"That's how I get it from Lowell. "Smokin's the principal thing in her life, when she's all by herself. What she does when she's doin' everything else, or not doin' a damned thing at all. She's a real junkie on those things." For him, this is an obsession.

"Lowell with an obsession's an idea that bothers me," Paradise said.

"It bothers me because I think he's tellin' me the truth when he says her smokin' gets to him. It makes him worry she might be the cause of him going back to smoking again. He's aware that it's possible he might get unlucky again, doing something that he knows he shouldn't do like robbing another bank or something. And if he gets caught doing it, which he knows's always a risk in that line of work, that would mean that he'd end up going back inside again. If he ever gets lugged again and almost anything'd do it, record like he's got; parking overtime'd be enough that'll be all it'll take. Put him right back in the can, and this time it'll be for all day, the entire rest of his natural. Habitual criminal, multiple loser like he is, the new law could be "Ten strikes and you're out" he would still qualify, easy.

"So, say he hasn't got anything in mind right now, any special thing he's got in mind to get a large amount of money fast. That's good, but with him it's always been kind of a temporary condition; he's always in it 'til he spots something that looks like prime pickings. "Candy," is what he calls it; a job that's too good to resist. Well, he's older now, lost a yard or two off his fastball, and he swears he's reformed.

But in the back of his mind he still has to think it could happen again. Some big opportunity might turn up any day, and Lowell just wouldn't be able to pass it up. He knows himself pretty well by this time, what his limitations are. He gets hot pants when he sees a job he thinks he can knock over easy. Major temptations're hard for him to resist.

"This's a big country. When he's been able to, Lowell's always been footloose, but he's spent a lot of years inside and he hasn't seen all of it yet. He knows somewhere he hasn't been yet there's bound to be another temptation he couldn't bear to turn down. The only reason he hasn't gone for it yet is that he hasn't seen it. If he sees it, he knows he'll say Yes.

"So he might get caught again. If does, he's back inside. They're not going to let him smoke. He'll have to quit again. Lowell ain't sure he could do that. He's dead sure he doesn't want to.

"That's why I think he's tellin' the truth, that he's pokin' her all the time and he likes that all right, but it bugs him that she smokes.

I don't think this's good news for this boneheaded broad that you've got on your hands here, wasn't too bright to begin with. This is a dangerous man.

"He's proven it, many times. The videos of him in banks when he's been robbing them show a very scary man in a state of cold homicidal rage, capable of doing anything. You would not want to've been in one of them, getting cash on your MasterCard, when Lowell and some friends stopped by to make a withdrawal. The people who've attended his robberies in person 've testified that he's frightening to behold.

"Terrifying' is a word they often use.

"This is the man whose woman's smoking truly infuriates him. He likes screwing her and having her blow him. For that he has to be around her, so he tries not to let her smoking make him mad. But self-control isn't Lowell's stock in trade. Self-restraint isn't something that he's good at, especially where sex's also involved.

"This guy is what teenage boys wish they were. He's a sex engine. In the place where you and I have got our penises, he's got a jack-hammer.

He's what they call a paraph iliac He's got an abnormally powerful sex drive. There really is such a thing as being sexually insatiable, and he is that. When he's been in the can, they've had to put him in solitary several times for sexually running amok, assaulting other inmates. Either he wants to bugger them and they don't want him to, or else he wants them to blow him and they're not keen on that either, so as a result he's going to beat on them until they see it his way.

"Keep in mind what kind of polished gentlemen make up our prison populations. These guys that he's threatening are thugs themselves, hardened criminals like him and they're afraid of him.

"When he's been in solitary, locked up by himself; knowing there's a TV camera on him every minute; no access to any erotic material outside his own diseased imagination; he's been observed masturbating to orgasm eleven times in one twenty-four-hour period. In that same period he also had a wet dream. He'd been jerking off all day that is what they had him doing; merrily watchin' dirty movies every half hour or so.

Then he went to sleep for a while, five or six hours, I guess and while he was asleep he got hard and came off again. And then when he woke up, the first thing he did was jack off.

"This was at one of the institutions where the psychologist got permission to test this new aversion-therapy on him. It sounds like some kind of a fantastic joke, but it's some starry-eyed nitwit's bright idea of a new treatment for sex offenders child molesters; bell-ringers; guys who beat up prostitutes; rapists."

"Every type of leading citizen," Merrion said.

"Right," Paradisio said. "I guess no one's ever proven it works, but then no one's ever proven any of the standard, traditional approaches've worked either. I don't think anyone's ever come up with a cure for those guys they could demonstrate was reliable. So you could ever feel really comfortable letting them loose. Basically they show the dirty pervert all kinds of filthy stuff, find out what really turns him on. Then overpower him with it: Show him dirty movies and let him beat his meat until it's raw or it falls off, whichever comes first. It sounds to me almost as though it oughta be cruel and unusual punishment, stir the guy up into such a frenzy that he does that to himself; has so much fun he really hurts himself."

"While the medics thoughtfully look on and take notes, I presume,"

Merrion said. "All in the interest of science, of course. Are we still sure we know which one of these people in the playroom's the guy who's got the problem? Or is it just possible that both of them're now upstanding one from watching the movies, the other one from watching the watcher?"

"That was my first thought," Paradisio said. "Anyway, when they put Chappelle in the box and made him watch porn flicks all day, he took to it right off. He really seemed to like it."

"Oh, I bet he did," Merrion said. "Much better 'n re shelving the books in the prison library. Much more fun watching' "Debbie do Dallas" 'n it is mopping down the dining hall. What'd he do, set a new record for the pony-lope?"

"They shut the VCR off after three hours," Paradisio said. "By then he'd finished off five erections."

"Very impressive," Merrion said. "They should groom him for the Olympics. Maybe the way to rehab this guy is get him a movie tryout.

If he doesn't get stage-fright, he could be worth a fortune. He's not a bad guy after all; just a poor unhappy kid who missed his true calling in life."

"Yeah," Paradise said, 'but they didn't do that, so as a result I've got him. What I'm afraid'll happen is that some night after he and Lady Janet've been drinking and he's been in her a couple or three times, he'll be ready again before she is. And she'll say "No, let's wait a minute, honey. Take a break and have a smoke, make ourselves another drink. We got all night to play." And he'll go berserk and either kill her for putting him off or else force her do it, and in the process be so rough he'll kill her without meaning to. Not that it'll matter much to her."

"If he's telling the truth," Merrion said. "Dangerous guys don't always do that, as I'm sure you probably know." He did not wish to believe that Chappelle was a threat. If he was then he would first have to think of something he could do that would keep Janet safe, and then he would have to do it. That would be more work for him. "More work's against the chief clerk's religion," Larry Lane had said.

"Well, yeah," Paradisio said, 'but like I say: I don't think he's lying to me. He doesn't have anything to gain by doing it. Why lie if it doesn't get you anything? He doesn't give enough of a shit about me or the pathetic little things that I can do to him. Put him back in jail?

It's practically his second home. I don't care, but it's still bad news for the broad. She's pissing him off. That's never a wise thing to do.

"I think you should at least tell her. He's not doing this 'cause he's in love. Because he likes her, even feels sorry for her. He's fucking her because she's got the equipment, what he prefers to get the job done. Brains're not included in that, so it's okay with him that she's not only stupid but probably not right in the head, talks ragtime or isn't all there. Dependable pussy is what he's after, and that's what she's offering this week. This week and the week after next. If her talk starts to distract, he just buys her another drink. And if one pop doesn't quite do the job, another one after it will. Sooner or later she'll pass out on him, and then he can go to sleep. Knowing he'll get back into her again two or three times in the morning.

"Lowell Chappelle is a practical man. Half-breeds're often that way, I've noticed. Used to working the fringes; they get pretty good at the game. You've got to find some way to warn her, and make her understand she's being warned."

"If you just bought a carton of cigarettes, you mean," Merrion said to Janet. "If you bought a carton, say, every five days, then you wouldn't need to go down to Dineen's every morning, the way you do now.

Then only every fifth day."

"Well, maybe every three or four days," she said. "I've always been:

"Have I got it?" Then I'll have it. The booze and the pills, and the cigarettes, too. Or if I had something to sniff." She frowned. "Which I haven't been doing for quite a long time. I wouldn't want you thinkin' that. But when I did, when I was doin' that, that was the way that I did it, all right? Just like with everything else. If I've got it, I'll use it. No matter how long it's supposed to last me, I'll use it if I got it around."

"I wasn't suggesting…" Merrion said, 'anything like that. I didn't mean anything like that. That you might be back on the stuff.

You gave me your word, you wouldn't do that you were all finished with that stuff. And that was an important part of our deal, that you'd keep that promise to me. Because otherwise, you know, all bets were off. No help from me with the judge. Or with the people over at Welfare, or with the building super, either, up at the place you live.

Well, so far as I know, you have done that, stayed clean. So I'm still trying to help you."

"Because those fuckin' neighbors of mine I've got up there," she said, 'they are real nosy people, and mean. The people who were there when I moved in there, like you said, when you got me in, those were very nice people there then. I got along with them good. But then one at a time, they all seem to've moved out. Always just one at a time. Almost so you wouldn't notice. And then if you did, well, you'd just assume, the new ones'll be just like them.

"But it didn't turn out that way. These're not nice people there now.

These're a very mean, loud, kind of people. I don't like them. I'd like to do something to them. Spray-paint their cars or something like that. Get back at them for how they act. But I don't. I don't do anna thing say nothin', to them. I just go along there, minding my business, not a care in the world. Don't give them no bullshit at all.

I'm not that kind of person. But I'm not so sure about them. I think if they wanted, get rid of a person, you know? That they might start thinkin' how to do it, that would hurt their reputation. And if they couldn't find something out, well, it's not like I'm sayin' I know they've done this, they got you all concerned here like you are today, so you thought you had to see me."

"I have to see you every month, Janet," he said wearily. "It's part of our arrangement, and by now I shouldn't have to tell you again, every month when you come in. When I have someone call you and remind you to come in, it doesn't necessarily mean I've heard something about you. Or that I haven't, either. It's just time for you to come and see me and let me see how you're doing."

"I know, but I'm just sayin'," she said, 'that if they told you something then they must've made it up. "Cause they didn't see nothin'. All I am sayin' here is that they could've, they could've done that, it's the kind of thing they might do."

She looked anxious and wrung her hands. "You see what I'm sayin' to you? They're the type of people that would, would do something like that, make up some bad things, just to get someone in trouble. These are very mean people. They would do that to me. They would do that to anyone, really. They wouldn't stop at anna thing It wouldn't matter to them. Somebody really should do, you know, something about them.

Someone really should. Before they go and hurt somebody else. They really don't care what they do, as long as they get their own way."

She paused and thought, frowning, looking at the floor. She nodded, as though satisifed she had settled something in her mind that had troubled her. "I could do it myself," she said, looking up and nodding again. "I could fix them myself if I hadda. I don't know if you know this, if this's something I told you, before, but I can take care of myself. A lot of people; all my life a lot of people've been always thinking I couldn't do that, take care of myself. And some of them thought, well, they tried to do things to me. And then they were very surprised. I gave them a big surprise. I can do things. So I could, if I hadda, do something. And I would, too. Except for this thing I got, that you got over me; maybe it'd be better this time if you did it instead. If you did something to them for me. That I shouldn't, you know, do anything? Might get me in more trouble here?"

"No, you shouldn't," he said. "You have to stay out of trouble. That's your most important job right now: you stay out of trouble for a year.

You're almost home now; only one month more to go. Then you'll have done it, the year. You can do that, you'll be free. You wont have to come in and see me anymore, which I know you don't look forward to.

Being on your own again, and we'll hafta see if we can get you not her job. So that's what you want to concentrate on. Just a little bit longer: proving that you can behave."

Janet wasn't bright but she was clever. She was playing for time.

Sooner or later he'd become tired or hungry; have to go to the bathroom; meet his next appointment; decide to go home. Then instead of it being necessary for her to plead fatigue, played-out memory, generalized confusion, or something else, anything, in order to escape, he would call it off and let her go.

Merrion had first encountered play-acting during his indoctrination as a rookie clerk working the juvenile court session under the carefully reserved supervision of Larry Lane: Brylcreemed up swept wave of hair and the heavily spiced Jade East after-shave lotion; flared trousers and the counterfeit Gucci loafers; bushy grey-black mutton-chop sideburns: Lawrence D. Lane, Clerk of the Court, acting monarch of every damned thing he surveyed. "You're only young for a while."

Larry did it with panache; he did not like training novices. "No mercy," he said, telling Merrion how to deal with beggars seeking undeserved favors or asking them on days when Merrion did not feel like granting any, even to the worthy. "For any damned reason at all, or for no reason at all. No quarter. Especially when they start in on you, giving you the old routine. They're trying to distract you. Get you to thinkin' about something else, and then actually discussin' it, talkin' about it with them, something' you weren't even thinkin' about when they came in.

"When they do that, you start saying "Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit." And you keep on sayin' it, all right? Until they get discouraged, go away, and stop trying to do it. I tell you, son, I tell you true: it's the only way."

Merrion had been politically insinuated into Lane's office as a reward for more than six years of doglike devoted service, the first two as an unpaid volunteer, in behalf of the electoral ambitions of Assistant by de facto House Majority Leader Daniel Hilliard. Roger Hulsman of Wey-mouth retained his clawlike hold on the title, the perquisites and pay, for what he had announced would be his final term thus 'laming his own fuckin' duck," as Hilliard said.

That political experience had made Merrion mistrust any tactic of dismissing a voter or disappointing a potential ally except the familiar one getting rid of the petitioner by soothingly lulling him into the hopeful but mistaken belief that if at all possible his wishes would be granted; sending him away already softened up for the gradual accretion of the understanding that he wasn't going to get what his patron had already made painfully clear was going to be extremely hard to bring about. A neutral party seeking a favor was a loyal friend in prospect. If circumstances made it necessary to reject his proposal, the prudent politician tried to do it so that he did not go away an enemy.

Lane smelled Merrion's reservation. "This isn't politics you're playing now, not while you're in here. Not when you're dealing with the scum that we have to deal with. These bastards can't do a thing for you or to you. What these bastards are's fuckin' helpless. In here you don't have to be nice, even pretend to be nice. You're official; you are real; and this's the real fuckin' world, where you are right now. They are the real people in it, the dirt off the street that's tracked in here.

"The outside where you used to be may've looked like the real world to you and Hilliard, but trust me, my friend, it was not. Out there you were dealing with other real people who wanted to be doing what they were doing, in the place where they were doing it. Sometimes it was the same thing you wanted, or Hilliard wanted, so you had to fight those other people to get it. Sometimes you beat them and sometimes they beat you, but most times either way, you could respect them.

"What you're doing in here is dealing with scum. They don't want to be in here. They don't want anything except Out, so they can go back to doing what they did want that got them hauled in here. They hate you but they respect you. You're god to them, at least for that day that they're here. But don't let it go to your head; every other day somebody else's money, somebody else's car, the booze or the white powder is their god. It's not like they're choosy. But just the same, that day when you're their god is a long one. It's the rest of their lives. That's what it looks like to them. That's as far as they can see; it's the way that they think and they live. The only way they can think, you see? Because that's the way that they live.

"They got a short attention span. A long weekend for them's as long as your whole baseball season. They think in terms of how long they've got left to be high on what they just smoked or injected or sniffed, before they have to go out and get some more money, one way or the other, to get stuff to get high again before otherwise they crash and burn. Our week is a month in their lives, and six months in the County House for these bozos's the same as the rest of their lives. It's further'n their eyes can see.

"So that's the new power you got now. It's you who decides what it's gonna be for them. Whether they live or whether they die: doesn't matter. Good reason; bad reason; no reason at all, except you got a hair 'cross your ass. All totally up to you here.

"Most of them already know. They know if they don't like what you say you will do for them or to them, even if it's nothin', they're up shit creek. Nowhere else to go. Your bad mood is their tough shit. Any place else they go, over your head, upstairs: if they get anything at all they'll get less, or else so damned much more that when they leave this place they'll wish they'd known enough just to've stopped at you.

"You're thinkin': "What if one of these bozos gets mad, what if he gets really mad? What if he goes to his rep, to my rabbi? What'll happen to me if he does?"

"I'll tell you what happens then, he tries to pull any that shit," Lane said. "Not one fuckin' thing's what happens. Not one fuckin' thing.

Because you know what? There'll come a day, this year or next, when His rep or your rabbi's gonna need a big favor, and this'll be the only place in the whole fuckin' world he can get that favor done. His kid takes a bust or his wife's drivin' under; some guy he owes big takes a collar for asking' a lady cop in plain clothes if she'd like to give him a blow-job. Lemme tell you something', pal: When that day comes that this guy's rep or your rabbi has to make that phone call, here, to get it straightened out as he knows it will he doesn't want havin' you remember how he stuck it up your ass when some shit bird-civilian complained. As he knows you will if he ever does.

"He didn't put you in here so that you'd get mad at him, and then when he needed something, get even tell him to go fuck himself. He put you in here so that some day when he absolutely has to get a favor done, you'll remember him kindly and be grateful to him for that thing he did for you, so long ago.

"So, when the scumbag, any scumbag, goes and gripes to his rep about you, your rabbi wont do a damned thing to you; that's what he'll do.

Why you think it is that the guys like Brother Hilliard put their friends in here? You ever think about that? It's because they know what we find out, just as soon's we get in here: We become bulletproof.

Bulletproof even from them. In this job, we're immortal. If you're smart you only want your friends to be immortal, and to stay your friends after they do.

"Now, with the shit birds that don't know this, you might as well teach 'em. Sooner they find out, the better. The way we do things in this place. We have to get rid of some bastard, which we have to do every day, well, that's what we do: We get rid of 'em, fast as we can.

Sometimes we make mistakes, but that's all right. We back each other up. All the way up, and then back down the line. We make it stick.

That way the thing works for us, instead of us workin' for it."

Merrion had never uttered Lane's mantra, but he had applied the tactic, furtively at first; time and time again he had seen it work. It always worked.

He looked at his watch. It was coming up on 10:00 A.M." forty-five minutes to his regular tee-time at Grey Hills. Janet had taken enough of his morning. Saturday was his day off. He cleared his throat.

"Right," he said. "Well, there I can't help you. Help you get along with the other tenants. I don't run the building. You got a complaint there, you see Mister Brody. If he can, I'm sure he'll help you out.

But that's not why I wanted you in here.

"The reason you're here is you're seeing a man name of Lowell Chappelle, and letting him stay overnight." She opened her mouth and he held up his hand. "Don't even bother," he said on a rising inflection. "I wont tell you who told me, I don't have to tell you, and I'm not going to tell you. If you try to tell me it isn't true, I'll call you a liar, which you will be. And it will upset me, Janet, if I find I have to do that. You haven't lied to me yet, that I know about and if you ask around, people will tell you: I always know, when somebody tries to lie to me as I didn't think that you would when I gave you a break. That's the reason why I've been able to try to help you out a little. Because I know you've always told me the truth. Just like I've always told you the truth. So, when I tell you that something about you's started to disturb me, as I'm telling you something is now, you know I'm telling the truth.

"What's disturbing me is that what I hear's been going on in your life is not good. It's a very bad thing in fact, what I hear, and I know very well that it's true. So, since the only thing that you can really say to me is that it's not true, and that will be a lie, which would be a very bad mistake, the best thing you can do right now is just shut up and listen to me."

She closed her mouth and looked scared.

"Good," he said, 'that's much better. Mister Chappelle is a convicted felon. Mister Chappelle's been convicted seven times. I've been around long enough to know what went on when he got sentenced. The first two or three times he was young and looked scared, just like you're looking right now, so the judges went easy on him. They were in hopes that he'd mend his ways. He didn't. So the judges started giving him time, in the hope that might straighten him out. His third or fourth trip on the merry-go-round, he got two years and did one. But that didn't do the trick either. Apparently he still wasn't convinced that the lawful life's the best one.

"When he came out, he stayed out for less'n two years, probably not being good, but being careful or lucky. Doing bad things but not getting caught. Probably went to his head; maybe made him a little bit cocky. Alas and alack, his good luck ran out as good luck has a way of doing. He slipped up and he got caught again, did another bad thing someone could prove.

"So this was his fifth trip, let's say. He still got off easy, considering his history. The judge gave him five in the jar. He came out after he'd done three, still having learned very little. People're starting to think: "He's had all these chances, all this instruction; and still he doesn't behave. Maybe he's not a good kid. Less'n a year and he's back in the gravy. Gets ten-to-twelve and does most of the ten.

"So when he came out, his next-to-last trip, he'd been in the courts on six offenses fourteen years in the slammer. Even allowing for the fact that he got an early start he was seventeen, he first made himself known to the authorities after six convictions for doing bad stuff, he's no longer an innocent kid. He'd used up his slack. So when he got grabbed the seventh time, and he had a machine gun with him, people were convinced he was a bad actor, very bad boy indeed.

"So they said to him: "Okay, Mister Chappelle, now we get the idea. You don't seem to get the idea. Here's your program: Twenty years to be served, FCI McNeil Island, 'way out there in Washington State. This time you're doing hard time."

"This gentleman caller of yours, Miss LeClerc: Leaving aside the obvious fact that at age fifty-seven he's kind of old for you, twice your age, he is not the kind of fellow we like to see refined young ladies under our care and supervision hanging out with all the time. Much less shacked up with in respectable apartment buildings we got them into, and which we've been paying the rent on. So we want you to break it off with him. As of now, this very minute, Mister Chappell is off-limits to you."

"But I like him," she whined, pouting her lower lip. "I'm a normal woman, and I need a man, and he always treats me real good." She paused and pouted, lowering her head so that when she looked at Merrion she had to look through her eyelashes. "I like doing things for him," she said, 'and he likes having me do them. He says that's the only reason he's ever had any trouble with a woman, was because she wouldn't do the things he wanted her to do. But I like to do them, and so therefore we're fine."

Merrion sighed and stood up. "Uh uh," he said, "I don't care to hear it. You've got the word. I just gave it to you. Quit entertaining Chappelle at your place, and don't see him any other place, either. You do, and I'll hear about it, and when I do, I'll do something about it.

Furthermore, I will do it to you.

"You wont like it. The first thing I'll do, I'll pull your case out of the file which I can do since I'm the one who put it in there and I will tell the judge what you've been doing. Screwing Lowell Chappelle, a bad actor and known felon. Not at all the kind of person we want hanging around with defendants who've got cases on file here in this court. This to Judge Cavanaugh will mean the same thing it means to me: that the deal we made — I would place your case on file; you'd behave yourself and do as you're told that deal isn't working out.

"I know what the judge'll do, just in case you don't. What he'll do is tell me to take your case out of the file and mark it up for hearing, any old day I like, and that's exactly what I'll do. Then, come next weekend, I'll send a couple of cops and a matron over to your place and catch you flopping around in bed with Mister Chappelle, as you've been told not to do. They'll put you in the lock-up for the rest of the weekend.

"On Monday the judge'll have me call your case, and before you can so much as catch your breath and call me even one bad name, he'll make a finding of guilty on that old charge of grand larceny. To which, you'll remember, you've already admitted facts sufficient to prove guilt. And then he will send you to jail. You'll do a year down in MCI Framingham, Janet, okay? Mister Chappelle wont be on your list of approved visitors, just like he isn't out here any more, now that we've had our nice little chat, but you'll hardly notice.

"There'll be so many other things for you to dislike, you'll probably forget all about Lowell. You'll lose your nice little apartment we wont keep it vacant for you, while you're gone, and we wont get you a new one when you get out again. You wont have any privacy, or your freedom to do what you like, as little as that has been. No indeed, Janet, once you get down there, all day long you'll do just as you're told. And you'll be told plenty, my dear. Now, is that what you want me to do?"

She looked at the floor and shook her head No. "Aloud," Merrion said, 'answer me."

She looked up with fear and shook her head again. "No," she said, 'please don't do that to me."

"I don't want to," he said, making statements. "But I will, if you make me. You know that. You wont make me now, will you, Janet?"

"No, I wont," Janet said. "I'll be good."